Ramiel Pamonag July 30, 2018

Cherizza Lee Brufal Philosophy

Guilla Khate Molina Sir Yapching

Gr. 12 ABM D - Justice

“THE INCEPTION”

The Question of Ethics

The first ethical dilemma we come across in this movie is when Cobb sets out to find an
architect for his ‘job’ to build the dream worlds he will be using. To do this he seeks out his
father, who is a professor at a college, and he introduces Cobb to one of his brightest students,
Ariadne. Cobb approaches her and gives her a small test to design a maze in 2 minutes that takes
at least 1 minute to solve. When she questions why he will not explain the job to her, he tells her
that it “isn’t strictly legal.” This draws a red flag for her, and you can see that she kind of stops
and ponders what he has said, but she does not pursue the issue any further. The issue was
portrayed in a mysterious way that made it very appealing for Ariadne and caused her to
continue with the test in order to learn about the job.

The issue was not really resolved in that she did not question Cobb any more about the
legality of the job or anything she was doing. Cobb was very subtly persuasive and lured her in
deeper and deeper by showing her how much control she had and all of the things she could
change in the world around her in the dream. By the time she accepted the concept of designing
the world inside of a dream and all of the things she could change by just thinking it, she became
more and more interested and intrigued. She completely overlooked the fact that the job she
would be helping was not legal and began to have fun with what she was doing.

Other scene of the movie that shows ethical is when Cobb and his team, which consists of
five others, actually enter the dream world in which they will be completing the inception. When
they enter into Robert’s subconscious, they are attacked by the “projections” or people in his
subconscious. One of Cobb’s crew is shot and is dying, so the rest of the crew plan to kill him,
which would normally just cause him to wake up and leave the dream world. Cobb stops them
and informs them that because of the sedation they are using, they will not wake up if they die,
but rather go into a state of limbo where they will spend decades in and may never wake up
from. At this point, there is no way to resolve the issue because they are all already in the dream
world and cannot wake up until the timer they have set wakes them up. As imagined, everyone
involved in the job is extremely upset with Cobb and the fact that he left this major detail out of
the agreement they all entered in to. If any of them dies in the dream world, they may never
wake up.

Another underlying issue is that Cobb’s deceased wife keeps showing up in all of the
different dream worlds, trying to sabotage their mission and kill the members of Cobb’s crew.
Cobb did not explain that this would happen to his crew, especially Ariande, who has no
background on Cobb. He should have been much more open with the people he was working
with in order to gain their trust and protect them.