David Pearce (philosopher) Quotes (1959-)

“When one is gripped by excruciating physical pain, one is always shocked at just how frightful it can be.”

“Why expect a false theory of the world, i.e. classical physics, to yield a true account of consciousness?”

“By far my greatest dread in life […] is that (some variant of) the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is true.”

“[T]he existence of the mind-independent environment beyond one's world-simulation is a theoretical inference, not an empirical observation.”

“The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk – and one that can potentially be overcome.”

“Today, empathetic intelligence entails sharing the sorrows of other sentient beings. In our posthuman future, will empathy consist entirely in sharing each other's joys?”

“[U]nlike positive utilitarianism or so-called preference utilitarianism - neither of which can ever be wholly fulfilled - [negative utilitarianism] seems achievable in full.”

“Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code?”

“It is easy to romanticise, say, tigers or lions and cats. We admire their magnificent beauty, strength and agility. But we would regard their notional human counterparts as wanton psychopaths of the worst kind.”

“I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.”

“Some days will be sublime. Others will be merely wonderful. But critically, there will be one particular texture ("what it feels like") of consciousness that will be missing from our lives; and that will be the texture of nastiness.”

“As the neurobiological basis of feeling and emotion is unravelled, and the human genome decoded and rewritten, it will become purely an issue of post-human decision whether negative modes of consciousness are generated in any form or texture whatsoever.”

“Our present-day neurochemical cocktail, we are asked to believe, is the medium through which alien realms of consciousness can be grasped and neutrally appraised from a third-person perspective. Empirical research suggests this optimism is at best naïve.”

“If we already lived in a cruelty-free world, the notion of re-introducing suffering, exploitation and creatures eating each other would seem not so much frightful as unimaginable – no more seriously conceivable than reverting to surgery without anaesthesia today.”

“Humans already massively intervene in Nature, whether through habitat destruction, captive breeding programs for big cats, "rewilding", etc. So the question is not whether humans should "interfere", but rather what ethical principles should govern our interventions.”

“Suffering exists only because it was good for our genes. Conditionally-activated negative emotions were fitness-enhancing in the ancestral environment. In the current era, apologists for mental pain are serving as the innocent mouthpieces of the nasty bits of code which spawned them.”

“A few centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its biological signature, but rather that rational agents – for reasons unknown – will have chosen to preserve it.”

“All moral tradeoffs are messy. However, on some fairly modest ethical assumptions, when a severe and irreconcilable conflict of interests occurs, then the interests of the more sentient take precedence over the less sentient. This rule of thumb holds regardless of the age, race or species of the victim.”

“[B]oth natural selection and the historical record offer powerful reasons for doubting the trustworthiness of our naive moral intuitions. So the possibility that human civilisation might be founded upon some monstrous evil should be taken seriously - even if the possibility seems transparently absurd at the time.”

“[T]here is no fundamental biological reason why the human genome can't be rewritten to allow everyone to be "in" love with everyone else - if we should so choose. But simply loving each other will be miraculous enough; and will probably suffice. An empty religious piety can be transformed into a biological reality.”

“To be sure, risks abound; but no one is proposing compassionate stewardship of ecosystems by philosophers. Humans are capable of choosing our own future pain-sensitivity too; but any species-wide genomic shift in human pain tolerance will depend on the willingness of prospective parents to use preimplantation genetic screening.”

“If we don't address the genetic causes of suffering (physical and mental) we will find ourselves in 500 years enjoying material abundance via nanotech, living in a perfect democracy, colonizing space, and still sitting around wondering "Why are we miserable so much of the time? Why can't we all just get along? Why are we not all happy?"”