Gary Varner, Associate Professor

Department of Philosophy
Texas A&M University,
College Station, TX 77843
(409) 845-8499,
(409) 845-0458 (FAX),
g-varner@tamu.edu

PhD 1988, University of Wisconsin-Madison
MA 1983, University of Georgia
BA 1980, Arizona State University

Research interests:

Hare’s two-level (or “Kantian”) utilitarianism, animal welfare and animal rights philosophies (especially how empirical science informs their application), environmental ethics

Biographical narrative:

Varner wrote one of the first dissertations on environmental ethics and has since published a book and over 30 articles on related topics.

His first book, In Nature's Interests? Interests, Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1998), provides an original analysis of what it means to have morally significant interests and examines the alleged divide between animal rights views and sound environmental policy.

His published papers cover related topics in hunting, animal agriculture and human nutrition, medical research, cloning, and pet ownership, as well as philosophical issues associated with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the property takings debate.

He is currently finishing a second book, tentatively titled Persons, Near-Persons, and the Merely Sentient: An Empirically Grounded Approach to Animal Welfare and Animal Rights. The book will offer a new (and in various ways improved) defense of R.M. Hare’s two-level utilitarianism and its metaethical foundation (universal prescriptivism), expand significantly on Hare’s notion of “intuitive level rules,” defend the moral legitimacy of distinguishing among persons, "near-persons," and "the merely sentient," illustrate the implications of this distinction by applying the resulting ethical system to some issues regarding our treatment of animals, and compare and contrast these implications with the conclusions of Hare's most famous graduate student, Peter Singer, who claims to agree with Hare's theory, but reaches more abolitionist conclusions than Hare's theory implies.

He has been invited to speak on related topics by European Society for Ecological Restoration, the Foundation for Luso-American Development, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Bar Association's National Judicial College, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Society for Range Management, the Society for Conservation Biology, the Wildlife Society, the Society for Marine Mammology, the North American Association for Environmental Education, the Columbus Zoo, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, and the American Alfalfa Processors' Association.

Click here for a complete vita, including links to abstracts of papers and books.