David Pearce | |
|---|---|
,_September_2013.jpg){kind=spacer} Pearce in 2013 | |
| Born | April 1959 (age 64–65) |
| Alma mater | Brasenose College, Oxford[1] |
| Organisation | Humanity+ |
| Known for | The Hedonistic Imperative (1995) |
| Movement | Transhumanism, veganism |
| Website | www |
David Pearce (born April 1959)[2] is a British transhumanist philosopher.[3][4][5] He is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+.[6][7] Pearce approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective.[8]
Based in Brighton, England, Pearce maintains a series of websites devoted to transhumanist topics and what he calls the "hedonistic imperative", a moral obligation to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life.[9][10] His self-published internet manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative (1995), outlines how pharmacology, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and neurosurgery could converge to eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience from human and non-human life, replacing suffering with "information-sensitive gradients of bliss".[11][12] Pearce calls this the "abolitionist project".[13]
Pearce grew up in Burpham, Surrey. His parents, grandparents and three of his great-grandparents were all vegetarian and his father was a Quaker. From a young age, Pearce was concerned with death and aging, and later the problem of suffering. Pearce received a scholarship to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford, but never finished his degree.[14]
In 1995, Pearce set up BLTC Research, a network of websites publishing texts about transhumanism and related topics in pharmacology and biopsychiatry.[15] He published The Hedonistic Imperative that year, arguing that "[o]ur post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world."[16]
Pearce's ideas inspired an abolitionist school of transhumanism, or "hedonistic transhumanism", based on his idea of "paradise engineering" and his argument that the abolition of suffering—which he calls the "abolitionist project"—is a moral imperative.[13][17][18] He defends a version of negative utilitarianism.
He outlines how drugs and technologies, including intracranial self-stimulation ("wireheading"), designer drugs and genetic engineering could end suffering for all sentient life.[13] Mental suffering will be a relic of the past, just as physical suffering during surgery was eliminated by anaesthesia.[9] The function of pain will be provided by some other signal, without the unpleasant experience.[13]
A vegan, Pearce argues that humans have a responsibility not only to avoid cruelty to animals within human society but also to redesign the global ecosystem so that animals do not suffer in the wild.[19] He has argued in favour of a "cross-species global analogue of the welfare state",[20] suggesting that humanity might eventually "reprogram predators" to limit predation, reducing the suffering of animals who are predated.[21] Fertility regulation could maintain herbivore populations at sustainable levels, "a more civilised and compassionate policy option than famine, predation, and disease".[22] The increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the transhumanism movement has been attributed in part to Pearce's influence.[23]
In 1998, Pearce co-founded the World Transhumanist Association, known from 2008 as Humanity+, with Nick Bostrom.[11] Pearce is a member of the board of advisors.[24]
Currently, Pearce is a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies,[25] and sits on the futurist advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.[26] He is also the director of bioethics of Invincible Wellbeing[27] and is on the advisory boards of the Center on Long-Term Risk,[28] the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering[29] and since 2021 the Qualia Research Institute.[30]
Until 2013, Pearce was on the editorial advisory board of the controversial and non-peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses.[31] He has been interviewed by Vanity Fair (Germany) and on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze, among others.[32][33]
Pearce currently serves as an advisory board member for Herbivorize Predators,[34] an organization whose mission is to discover how to transform carnivorous animals into herbivorous ones in order to minimize suffering across all species.[35]
