26 It’s Make Your Mind Up Time
All day event with one question: How much of our world is a figment of our imagination? Experts from Sussex University’s Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, and other prominent brain researchers, give their answers. In eleven short presentations they build a picture of a person living in a fantasy world. That is you.
Research at this, the cutting edge of psychology, is vital to our understanding of how we lead our lives. It helps us to ease pain, judge fairness, understand fear; it gives insights into eye-witness accounts or historical records; whether medicines work or are placebos. Everything from child care to animal husbandry benefits from the research.
Eleven short (15 minute) talks lead us through the mind’s forest of preconceptions and instincts, showing how useful they can be, and how dangerous.
Sunday February 26
10am–5pm
Sallis Benney Theatre, 58-67 Grand Parade, BN2 0JY
Ages 16+ (All ages are welcome, but under 16s may find some of it hard going)
£10/£6. on the door. (Online sales now closed)
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Is the world a figment of the imagination?
What you see is what you get? Not really – what we see depends as much on what is in our head as what is outside it. Sam Hutton demonstrates…
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Is colour a figment?
With startling new illusions and experiments Steve Mould untangles some chromatic mysteries (why magenta is so weird, for instance). Physics and biology come to blows over colour.…
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The present is a figment
What you see is a figment of your imagination, backed up by occasional checks. Romi Nijhawan shows the flash-lag effect – how we predict the world and then are surprised when it doesn’t happen.…
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You have nothing to fear but fear itself
So you think you can tell, Heaven from Hell, Blue skies from pain, Can you tell real fear from a neuron firing in your brain? (Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Fear). Professor Andy Field says it’s all in the mind.…
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Does hypnosis work?
Is hypnosis real or a figment of imagination? Is any special induced state needed for people to perform strange or anti-social acts? Prof Zoltan Dienes challenges long-cherished views.…
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Pain is a figment
Dr Andrew Dilley traces the journey of a pain signal from its initiation up to the brain, and shows how our brain can influence the perception of pain.…
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Am ‘I’ a figment?
Nothing seems more real than our experience of our own bodies, but then again nothing is quite what it seems. Dr. Anil Seth shows how our conscious self is just another fiction of the brain.…
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Justice and the Law – can they co-exist?
Science may have a better claim to the pursuit of truth but in matters of law, can we ever see truth? Should we aim instead for justice? Barrister David Osborne discusses…
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What about God?
If you think science and religion can be harmonised, prepare to see the light! Dr. Robert Stovold and fellow skeptic Greg Marshall illustrate why they believe that God is all in the mind.…
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The Past is a Figment
Memories maketh the man, but how much of our memories is fact and how much fiction? Dr Dennis Chan explores the differing mechanisms by which memories are stored.…
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Free will is a figment
When we can do whatever we want, why do we do the same as everyone else? Patrick Haggard shows free will’s craven nature. The closer we look, the less we look like masters of our own destiny…
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Debates
Break-out sessions during the day will discuss truth and justice, spirituality and whether animals are conscious.…
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City Books
Full range of popular science books for young and old.…
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