Gary Varner

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.

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. 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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.

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 plants—have morally significant interests that ground prima facie (though overridable) duties. 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: