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David Pearce (philosopher)

David Pearce is a British philosopher of the negative utilitarian school of ethics. He believes and promotes the idea that there exists a strong ethical imperative for humans to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. His book-length internet manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative details how he believes the abolition of suffering can be accomplished through "paradise engineering". A transhumanist and a vegan, Pearce also calls for the elimination of cruelty to animals. Among his websites, there are many devoted to the plight of animals.

In The Hedonistic Imperative, Pearce outlines how technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, pharmacology, and neurosurgery could potentially converge to eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience in human life and produce a posthuman civilization.

Pearce owns domain names in large numbers in the area of scientific terms, especially those concerning psychopharmacology, and keywords concerning various drugs and terms related to them. These sites post original content.

Positions and affiliations

Pearce co-founded the World Transhumanist Association with Nick Bostrom, a fellow Oxford philosopher. The WTA advocates transhumanism, an ideology and movement which has emerged to support the recognition and protection of the right of citizens either to maintain or modify their own minds and bodies so as to guarantee them the freedom of choice and informed consent of using human enhancement technologies on themselves and their children.

Pearce sits on the board of the journal Medical Hypotheses.

He is co-founder (with Pablo Stafforini, Sean Henderson, and Jaime Savage) and honorary president of the Abolitionist Society, a nonprofit organization which seeks to further the goals outlined in The Hedonistic Imperative.

BLTC Research

Pearce is also currently the director of BLTC Research.

BLTC Research is a non-profit research organization which was founded in 1995. It seeks to elucidate the underlying physiological mechanisms of physical and mental suffering, with the intention of eradicating any form of suffering. The goals of research in Better Living Through Chemistry include determining the final common neurological pathway of both pleasure and pain in the brain. Once this process is better understood, it could be possible to more effectively design medicines and other treatments for various mental illnesses, as well as cure the painful symptoms of many diseases.

BLTC Research maintains philosophical underpinnings on the writings of negative utilitarian philosophers. Negative utilitarians set the moral goal of life as the minimization of suffering, as opposed to utilitarianism, which promotes the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, sometimes at the expense of others. Rather than the promotion of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, negative utilitarianism promotes the least suffering for the most number of people. Negative utilitarians believe that any kind of suffering in the world is worse than a large number of people that are happy at the expense of others who suffer. BLTC Research promotes the idea of using modern biology to eliminate any forms of suffering. Based in Brighton, UK, the organization researches and publishes online texts in support of the biochemical and biotechnological methods by which its proponents believe sentient suffering could be abolished in future generations. The BLTC network also contains information regarding many psychopharmacological methods that have the potential to make contemporary life as painless as possible for those currently living. Along with providing information and ideas on the emerging philosophies of abolitionism, paradise engineering, and neo-hedonism; the work of BLTC Research acts as a focal point for supporters of other well-established philosophies including, but not limited to, techno-utopianism and transhumanism. BLTC provides arguments supporting many disparate threads of interest connecting these individual schools of thought.

Research programs

The areas of research which BLTC Research supports are abolitionism, paradise engineering, and neo-hedonism. Abolitionism, supported by the Abolitionist Society, is concerned with the ethical and moral arguments inherent in removing suffering from all sentient life. Paradise engineering proposes that the future eradication of all sentient suffering, pain and malaise could be best achieved through the utilisation of modern methods of biotechnology such as nanotechnology and genetic engineering. Neo-hedonism focuses on the ways in which contemporary day-to-day suffering can be most successfully dealt with through the use of psychopharmacological personalized medicine.

BLTC network

The BLTC network consists of a large network of websites, many of which provide information regarding central areas of contemporary abolitionist, neo-hedonist and paradise engineering research, including the combined manifesto supporting these three research programs, such as The Hedonistic Imperative written by BLTC founder David Pearce, as well as critiques of the most popular arguments used against such techno-utopian perspectives, namely that of the Brave New World polemic. The BLTC network also contains many neo-hedonist texts regarding how readers can attempt to help themselves to feel mentally and physically "better than well" through developing and maintaining the correct balance of a healthy diet, responsible drug use, and pharmacogenomical personalized medicine. Further still, the BLTC network maintains a knowledge database concerned with many of the most well-researched modern compounds and practices that can be utilised for tackling pain and suffering in daily life.