David Pearce (philosopher)
| David Pearce | |
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Pearce in 2013
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| Residence | Brighton, England |
| Organization | Humanity+ |
| Known for | The Hedonistic Imperative (1995) |
| Movement | Transhumanism |
| Website |
The Hedonistic Imperative BLTC Research |
David Pearce is co-founder of Humanity+, formerly the World Transhumanist Association, and a prominent figure within the transhumanism movement.
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. His book-length 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 "gradients of bliss". Pearce calls this the "abolitionist project".
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.
In 1995 Pearce set up BLTC Research, a network of websites publishing texts about transhumanism and related topics in pharmacology and biopsychiatry. (BLTC initially stood for Better Living Through Chemistry.) 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."
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. He defends a version of negative utilitarianism:
Ethical negative-utilitarianism ... attaches value in a distinctively moral sense of the term only to actions which tend to minimise or eliminate suffering. ... It stems from a deep sense of compassion at the sheer scale and intensity of suffering in the world. No amount of happiness or fun enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. Nor can it outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day.
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