David Pearce (philosopher)

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 negative utilitarian perspective.^[8]

David Pearce
Pearce in 2013
Born	April 1959 (age 66)
Alma mater	Brasenose College, Oxford[1]
Organisation	Humanity+
Known for	The Hedonistic Imperative (1995)
Movement	Transhumanism, veganism
Website	www.hedweb.com

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]

Early life and education

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. He became a secular scientific rationalist around the age of 10 or 11.^[14]

Pearce received a scholarship to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford, but never finished his degree.^[14]

Hedonistic transhumanism

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]

Humanity+ and other roles

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]

Books

• The Hedonistic Imperative. 1995. OCLC 44325836.
• "The Biointelligence Explosion: How Recursively Self-Improving Organic Robots will Modify their Own Source Code and Bootstrap Our Way to Full-Spectrum Superintelligence" in Eden, A. H.; Moor, J. H.; Soraker, J. H.; Steinhart, E., eds. (2012). Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment. Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 199–238. ISBN 9783642325595. OCLC 915554031.
• Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering?. Vinding, M. (Ed.). 2017. ASIN B075MV9KS2

See also

• List of animal rights advocates