The Ethics of Imagination: The Space Between Your Ears Wrye Sententia, Ph.D. Director, CCLE

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The Ethics of Imagination The Space Between
Your EarsWrye Sententia, Ph.D.Director, CCLE

• Terasem 2006 Neuro-nanotechnology and the
  Preservation of Human Consciousness

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Ethics without Imagination is Dogma
Imagination without Ethics is Dangerous.
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It is inner space, not outer, that needs to be
explored.J.G. Ballard (1962)
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Empathy vs. Sympathy

• Empathy The power of projecting one's
  personality into the object of contemplation"
  Oxford English Dictionary
• The capacity to understand what another person
  is experiencing from within the others frame of
  reference (Gary Bravo 2001)

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Sympathy / SamenessEmpathy / Difference
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What is Ethics?

• compassion
• fairness
• honesty
• respect
• responsibility
• Institute for Global Ethics
• http//www.globalethics.org/about/faq.htmwhatethi
  cs

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Virgil Ulam
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Ulams experiment
Phase1 Basic Health Benefits
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Ulams experiment
Phase 2 Enhancement
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(1985)
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If you're trying to project the long-term
future, and what you get sounds like science
fiction, you might be wrong. But if it doesn't
sound like science fiction, it's definitely
wrong. ? Chris Peterson
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For real science to proceed, nanotechnologists
ought to distance themselves from the giggle
factor Steven M. Block (Lecture What is
Nanotechnology, presented at NIH conference
Nanoscience Nanotechnology Shaping Biomedical
Research (June 25, 2000)
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THE REALITY FACTOR
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Ulams experiment
Phase 3 Conversion
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Ulams experiment
Phase 3 Conversion
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• Joachim Schummer
• (April 2006)

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Neuro-nanofiction Horror or Harmony?
Greg Bears Blood Music takes the horror of
exponentially self-replicating, intelligent
nanomachines to its ultimate extremethe
termination of the natural worldDan
Dinello Technophobia Science Fiction Visions of
Posthuman Technology (2005)
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Human Rights Narratives in the 18th Century
Lynn Hunt. "The Paradoxical Origins of Human
Rights," in Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Lynn Hunt,
and Marilyn Young, eds., Human Rights and
Revolutions (Lanham, Md., 2000) 317.
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21st Century NarrativesInner Space
TechnologiesScience Fiction Meditation Art
Neuropharmaceuticals Full-Immersion
VR/GamesFuture Brain/Machine SymbiosisNeuro-nano
Interfaces
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Accelerating Rights Ethics in the 21st Century

• ImaginationNeuroethics
• Cognitive Liberty
• Cognitive Security

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Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited to all we now know and
understand, while imagination embraces the
entire world, and all there ever will be to know
and understand. ? Albert Einstein
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Nanomandala (UCLA)
wrye_at_cognitiveliberty.org www.cognitiveliberty.o
rg
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To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in
a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your
hand and eternity in an hour. Auguries of
Innocence, William Blake