Famous Vegans - David Pearce

David Pearce

He is a British philosopher of the negative utilitarian school of ethics. Ethical negative-utilitarianism is a value-system which challenges the moral symmetry of pleasure and pain. It doesn't question the value of enhancing the happiness of the already happy. Yet it attaches value in a distinctively moral sense of the term only to actions which tend to minimize or eliminate suffering.

David Pearce believes that we have an overriding duty to minimize - and ultimately abolish - (involuntary) suffering of any kind. He is a transhumanist and a vegan and calls for the urgent elimination of cruelty to animals. His manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative, outlines how technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals and neurosurgery could potentially eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience.

In 1995 he founded BLTC Research, which has as goal to abolish the biological substrates of suffering. Not just in humans, but in all sentient life. In 1998, he cofounded the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), which later changed its name to Humanity+. Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology.

He is the founder of the Abolitionist Society, a member of the Immortality Institute and the Life Extension Foundation and serves on the editorial review board of Medical Hypotheses. He also runs a webhosting firm that aims to encourage compassionate technophobes - humanist, transhumanist and traditional animal welfarist - to develop a strong online presence.

Quotes by David Pearce:

"Background? British philosopher - though of course one needn't be a utilitarian ethicist to advocate a cruelty-free world. I'm also a third-generation vegetarian/vegan. For as long as I can remember, I've had a horror of suffering of any kind."

"You can have all the "rights" in the world, but if you’re a human or non-human animal in agony or despair, these rights are worthless. Ultimately it’s well-being that counts. That’s why I’m a utilitarian."

"My main interest is the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering."

"It will technically be possible to get rid of all suffering within a century or two. Its abolition would be practical only if it were agreed in the sense of something like the moon program or the human genome project – if there was a degree of social consensus. There are certainly technological obstacles, but they are dwarfed by the ethical-ideological ones."

"Ethically, I think we need to ask: does the enjoyment many consumers derive from eating dead animal flesh morally outweigh the suffering that went into its production? Can we ever justify "owning" another sentient being - whether human or non-human? By what right?"

"Giving up foods of animal origin demands no heroic personal sacrifice - merely mild personal inconvenience. Indeed if one takes the trouble to explore vegan cuisine, there is an immense variety of dishes from which to choose. For there are literally thousands of different vegetables but only a few types of meat."

"If I pass a butcher-shop, to be honest, I think of Auschwitz. Yes, the non-human animals that we raise in factory farms and kill are not particularly intelligent; but they suffer horribly."

"One doesn't need to be intelligent to undergo profound distress. A convergence of evolutionary, behavioural, genetic and neuroscientific evidence suggests that the non-human animals we exploit and kill suffer intensely - just as "we" do."

"Factory-farmed animals spend almost their whole lives below "hedonic zero". In many cases, their distress is so desperate that they need to be prevented from mutilating themselves."

"Consider a pig. A pig has the intellectual capacity - and critically, the capacity to suffer - of a human toddler. We recognize that toddlers are entitled to love and care. By contrast, we factory-farm and kill millions of pigs using methods that would earn a lifetime prison sentence if our victims were human."

"A commitment to the well-being of all sentience is written into the Transhumanist Declaration. What does such a commitment mean in practice? Are we really ever going to stop killing and eating each other? Ideally, the power of moral argument alone would suffice. More plausibly, only the advent of abundant, cheap and delicious genetically-engineered vatfood can lay the foundations for global veganism."

"I think we must embrace the development of cultured meat because its mass-manufacture and marketing will enable the morally apathetic to eat a cruelty-free diet too. When the majority of the world’s population has made the transition to a vegan or cultured-meat diet, I predict that rearing other sentient beings for human consumption will be made illegal under international law – just like human slavery today."

"Tentatively, I predict that next century and beyond "natural" meat will be reckoned no more legally or socially acceptable than a diet based on human flesh. Most people with a taste for the stuff may eat in vitro gourmet steaks and the like — cultured meat that will taste richer in flavor and texture than flesh from our butchered cousins. Genetically-engineered vatfood doesn’t sound appetizing under that description. But when "vegetarian meat" is properly branded and marketed, who will deliberately choose the bloodstained option if cheaper and tastier cruelty-free products are available?"

"Personally I find the idea of in vitro meat revolting - even though its potential mass-production is cruelty-free. But I worry that moral argument and antispeciesist advocacy alone aren’t going to outlaw factory farming and the death factories."

"If pressed, many people - perhaps most people - will acknowledge that factory-farming is cruel. But in the main, they'll then shrug their shoulders and carry on consuming meat and animal products just as before."

"I think it’s hard to reconcile transhumanism and revealed religion. If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves. If we want eternal life, then we’ll need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like. "May all that have life be delivered from suffering", said Gautama Buddha. It’s a wonderful sentiment. Sadly, only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the living world. Compassion alone is not enough."

"If you think minimising suffering is a good idea - and bioscience holds the answers - then web-based campaigning to win hearts and minds is a rational strategy."

"A global transition to a cruelty-free vegan diet won't just help non-human animals. The transition will also help malnourished humans who could benefit from the grain currently fed to factory-farmed animals. For factory-farming is not just cruel; it's energy-inefficient."

"What if posthuman "wildlife parks" could be cruelty-free? It’s technically feasible. I think any compassionate ethic - not just Buddhism or utilitarianism - must aim to extend the abolitionist project to the whole living world, not just our own ethnic group or species."

"The elephant population in a few parts of Africa has recovered sufficiently such that techniques such as depot-contraception have been introduced – in preference to cruel "culling". Ultimately a whole ecosystem could be managed in the same way."

"In my work, I explore futuristic, hi-tech solutions to the problem of suffering. But anybody who seriously wants to reduce human and non-human suffering alike should adopt a cruelty-free vegan lifestyle today."

Quotes are from the 2011 article A World Without Suffering?, a 2007 interview in the German edition of Vanity Fair, a 2007 interview with the Spanish magazine Cronopis, his 2009 interview: The Genomic Bodhisattva and a 2011 transcript of his guest chat on ARZone.