Gary Edward Varner (March 10, 1957 – June 28, 2023) was an American philosopher specializing in environmental ethics, philosophical questions related to animal rights and animal welfare, and R. M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism. At the time of his death, he was an emeritus professor in the department of philosophy at Texas A&M University; he had been based at the university since 1990. He was educated at Arizona State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison; at Madison, where he was supervised by Jon Morline, he wrote one of the first doctoral theses on environmental ethics. Varner's first monograph was In Nature's Interests?, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. In the book, Varner defended a form of biocentric individualism, according to which all living entities have morally considerable interests.
Varner started a research project in 2001 that looked at animals in Hare's two-level utilitarianism. The project's initial monograph, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition, was released by Oxford in 2012. In the book, Varner moved away from his biocentrism, instead endorsing a developed version of Hare's ethics. Varner draws a distinction between persons, near-persons and merely sentient beings; although all are morally considerable, the lives of persons are of the most significance, and the lives of merely sentient beings are of the least. The practical consequences of this view, though initial comments were offered in Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition, was to be explored in Sustaining Animals, with which Varner at one time had a contract with Oxford. His third book was Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics, co-authored with Jonathan Newman and Stefan Linquist, and published with Cambridge University Press. It was published in 2017.
Life and career
Varner completed a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at Arizona State University in 1980, before studying for a Master of Arts in philosophy at the University of Georgia, which he completed in 1983. He read for a PhD at University of Wisconsin–Madison, writing a thesis on environmental ethics; this was one of the first on the topic."Gary Varner ". Texas A&M University. Accessed November 13, 2016. Developed versions of some of the thesis's chapters were later published as chapters 2, 3, and 4 Varner's first book, In Nature's Interests?. His doctoral research was supervised by Jon Morline, who continued as a supervisor even after leaving Wisconsin.Varner 1998, p. vii. Graduating from Madison in 1988, Varner had a number of short-term jobs in the late 1980s; he lectured in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point from 1987 to 1988, acted as a visiting assistant professor at Madison's Institute of Environmental Studies in the Summer of 1988, and took up the same role, in philosophy, in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis from 1988 to 1990.Varner, Gary (2016). CV. Texas A&M University. Accessed November 13, 2016.
Varner joined Texas A&M University in 1990, becoming an assistant professor in 1991. He became director of graduate studies in 1994, a post he kept until 2010. Varner was promoted to associate professor in 1996, and, in 1998, published his first book: In Nature's Interests? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics, which was a part of Oxford University Press's Environmental Ethics and Science Policy Series, edited by Kristin Schrader-Frechette.Varner 1998. Varner was promoted to full professor in 2010, and acted as department head from 2011 to 2014.
Varner's second monograph, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in the Two-Level Utilitarianism of R. M. Hare, was published in 2012 by Oxford University Press.Varner 2012. Varner had been working on questions about R. M. Hare and animals since 2001, when he taught a graduate class exploring the subject; given that Peter Singer was a student of Hare, Varner was interested in exploring whether Hare's philosophy endorsed Singer's conclusions about animal liberation.Varner 2012, pp. xi–xii. A project entitled Harey Animals: Situating Animals in the Two-Level Utilitarianism of R. M. Hare was submitted to Oxford University Press, but this was subsequently split into two books; Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition was the first, while the second, Sustaining Animals: Envisioning Humane, Sustainable Communities, was under contract with the publisher. While Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition addresses theoretical issues in Hare's philosophy, Sustaining Animals was to be more practically focussed, exploring the applicability of the Harean philosophy developed in Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition to real-world issues concerning human-animal relationships.
In 2017, Varner's Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics, co-authored with the University of Guelph ecologist Jonathan Newman and the Guelph philosopher Stefan Linquist, was published by Cambridge University Press.For reviews, see Elliott-Graves 2018; Gregg 2018; Faith 2019; Lawson 2019. It was the subject of a topical collection of articles in volume 35, issue 1 of Biology & Philosophy, published in 2020. Varner died on June 28, 2023, after a period with cancer. He was 66. At the time of his death, he was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Texas A&M.
Thought
Biocentric individualism Varner's In Nature's Interests? offers a resolution of the debate between individualistic approaches to animal rights and holistic accounts of environmental ethics. Varner defends an interest-based biocentric individualism according to which all living beings—including plantsJensen 2000, p. 235.—have morally significant interests that ground prima facie (though overridable) duties.Rowlands 2000, p. 598. The approach follows in the tradition of the work of Kenneth Goodpaster and Paul W. Taylor, though Varner's approach differs from Taylor's in its focus on interests rather than duties, with Varner showing clear utilitarian commitments.
Varner begins by critiquing holistic approaches to environmental ethics, using J. Baird Callicott's as his example. He argues that the burden of proof is with holists to defend the claim that ecosystems have interests or have value for some other reason. He next considers desires as the paradigmatic basis of interests, exploring which beings have desires. Nonetheless, he argues that desires cannot be the sole basis of interests; 19th-century mariners, for instance, had an interest in using ascorbic acid to avoid scurvy, though they could not have desired the acid, as they did not know about it. Instead, such people had a "biological" interest in the acid. It is, Varner argues, the presence of biological interests that separates living beings from artifacts. This grounds Varner's argument for biocentrism, which Mark Rowlands summarises as follows:
Nothing at or below the level of a fish possesses desires. Nevertheless, all living things possess biological needs, and these needs are plausibly construed as interests. The welfare of an organism O is, at least in part, to be understood in terms of the interests, rather than the desires, of O. Therefore, all living things have a welfare. Therefore, all living things are morally considerable.Rowlands 2000, p. 599.
Rowlands argues that the problem with the book's central approach is that it assumes that all interests have a clear relation to welfare and thus moral considerability; an assumption which, he argues, is partially undermined by the introduction of biological interests.Rowlands 2000, pp. 599–601. Jon Jensen, who reviewed the book for Ethics and the Environment, raised a similar worry, arguing that Varner did not sufficiently justify his claim that biological interests are inherently morally significant.Jensen 2000, p. 237.
A distinctive aspect of Varner's theory as presented in In Nature's Interests? is the hierarchy of interests that he proposes; biological interests are the least important, with desire-based interests of greater significance and "ground projects"—possessed only by humans, these are "a nexus of [an individual's] most important desires"—of the most weight.Jensen 2000, pp. 237–8. Thus, Varner defends a kind of "axiological anthropocentrism"; this can be distinguished from "valuational anthropocentrism", according to which only humans have inherent value.Jensen 2000, p. 238.
The book also has a practical dimension, presenting debates between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics as of little practical consequence, and suggesting that animal rights goals can be consistent with holistic environmentalist goals.Jensen 2000, p. 236. Jensen argues that Varner's own discussion of the reconciliation of environmentalism and animal advocacy is too narrow, but that, nonetheless, Varner's own biocentric individualism offers potential in this area, even despite the limited engagement in the book with practical animal-related issues.Jensen 2000, pp. 238–9.
Two-level utilitarianism Hare's philosophy of two-level utilitarianism has been a focus of Varner's since the early 2000s, and was the subject of his Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition. In the book, Varner breaks with his previous biocentrism, instead endorsing sentientism (the idea that sentience is necessary and sufficient for moral considerability), prescriptivism, and two-level utilitarianism.Attfield and Humphreys 2012, p. 493. The book is split into three parts: "Hare's Two-Level Utilitarianism", "Persons, Near-Persons, and the Merely Sentient", and "Formulating ILS [Intuitive-Level System] Rules for Persons, Near-Persons, and the Merely Sentient". The first part offers a reconstruction and analysis of Hare's philosophy, while the latter two offer an original position on animal ethics and personhood.Kadlac 2015, p. 247.
In Part I, Varner offers considerable endorsement of Harean philosophy. Varner interprets Hare as understanding that utilitarianism derives from prescriptivism, and affirms Hare's argument on this point. He goes on to discuss the utility of Intuitive-Level System (ILS) rules;Attfield and Humphreys 2012, p. 494. these are the rules that one lives by in day-to-day life, which, though ultimately justified by it, do not derive their content from utilitarian calculation.Varner 2012, chap. 3. There are, for Varner, four key kinds of ILSs: "common morality, personal morality, professional ethics, and laws". Though these are deontological in "flavor", following the precepts of these ILSs is generally justified under two-level utilitarianism.Kadlac 2015, p. 248. Further arguments—these are original, rather than being derived from Hare's own—are then offered for Hare's prescriptivism.Attfield and Humphreys 2012, pp. 494–5.