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]
Avegan, 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]
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]
^Brey, Philip; Søraker, Johnny Hartz (2009). "Philosophy of Computing and Information Technology", in Anthonie Meijers (ed.). Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences. Elsevier, 1389.
^Pearce, David (2012). "The Biointelligence Explosion", in Amnon H. Eden, et al. (eds.). Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 199–236.
^ abcdThweatt-Bates, Jeanine (2016). Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman. London: Routledge, 50–51 (first published 2012).
^Sosis, Cliff (11 October 2022). "David Pearce". What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher?. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
^Adams, Nathan A. IV (2004). "An Unnatural Assault on Natural Law" in Colson, Charles W. and Nigel M. de S. Cameron (eds.). Human Dignity in the Biotech Century: A Christian Vision for Public Policy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 167. ISBN0830827838
^Pearce, David (16 September 2009). "The Genomic Bodhisattva". H+ Magazine (Interview). Interviewed by James Kent. Archived from the original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
Jewish Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer described life for factory-farmed animals as 'an eternal Treblinka': a world of concentration camps extermination camps and industrialized mass-killing. Strip away our ingrained anthropocentric bias, and what we do to other sentient beings is barbaric. Combating great evil justifies heroic personal sacrifice; going vegan entails mild personal inconvenience. The non-human animals we factory-farm and kill are functionally akin to human babies and toddlers. Babies and toddlers need looking after, not liberating. As the master species we have a duty of care to lesser beings, just as we have a duty of care to vulnerable and handicapped humans. As our mastery of technology matures, I think we need to build a cross-species global analogue of the welfare state.
Carnivorous predators keep populations of herbivores in check. Plasmodium-carrying species of the Anopheles mosquito keep human populations in check. In each case, a valuable ecological role is achieved at the price of immense suffering and the loss of hundreds of millions of lives. What's in question isn't the value of the parasite or predator's ecological role, but whether intelligent moral agents can perform that role better. On some fairly modest assumptions, fertility regulation via family planning or cross-species immunocontraception is a more civilised and compassionate policy option than famine, predation and disease. The biggest obstacle to a future of compassionate ecosystems is the ideology of traditional conservation biology—and unreflective status quo bias.
^Fairlie, Simon (2010). Meat: A Benign Extravagance. Chelsea Green Publishing. 230–231. ISBN978-1603583251.
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