College Station, Texas, United States of America
  •  535
    Prolegomena to any future artificial moral agent
    Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 12 (3): 251--261. 2000.
    As arti® cial intelligence moves ever closer to the goal of producing fully autonomous agents, the question of how to design and implement an arti® cial moral agent (AMA) becomes increasingly pressing. Robots possessing autonomous capacities to do things that are useful to humans will also have the capacity to do things that are harmful to humans and other sentient beings. Theoretical challenges to developing arti® cial moral agents result both from controversies among ethicists about moral theo…Read more
  •  269
    This book offers a powerful response to what Varner calls the "two dogmas of environmental ethics"--the assumptions that animal rights philosophies and anthropocentric views are each antithetical to sound environmental policy. Allowing that every living organism has interests which ought, other things being equal, to be protected, Varner contends that some interests take priority over others. He defends both a sentientist principle giving priority to the lives of organisms with conscious desires…Read more
  •  189
    Rejoinder to Kathryn paxton George
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 7 (1): 83-86. 1994.
    In Use and Abuse Revisited: Response to Pluhar and Varner, Kathryn Paxton George misunderstands the point of my essay, In Defense of the Vegan Ideal: Rhetoric and Bias in the Nutrition Literature. I did not claim that the nutrition literature unambiguously confirms that vegans are not at significantly greater risk of deficiencies than omnivores. Rather than settling any empirical controversy, my aim was to show how the literature can give the casual reader a skewed impression of what is known ab…Read more
  •  155
    What's wrong with animal by-products?
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 7 (1): 7-17. 1994.
    Without looking beyond the conditions under which laying hens typically live in the contemporary U.S. egg industry, we can understand why the production and consumption of factory farmed eggs could be judged immoral. However, the question, What (if anything) is wrong with animal by-products? cannot always be adequately answered by looking at the conditions under which animals live out their productive lives. For the dairy industry looks benign in those terms, but if we look beyond the conditions…Read more
  •  125
    Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (review)
    Philosophical Review 116 (2): 281-286. 2007.
  •  98
    Biological functions and biological interests
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 251-270. 1990.
  •  96
    Do Fish Feel Pain? (review)
    Environmental Ethics 33 (2): 219-222. 2011.
  •  88
    Drawing heavily on recent empirical research to update R.M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism and expand Hare's treatment of "intuitive level rules," Gary Varner considers in detail the theory's application to animals while arguing that Hare should have recognized a hierarchy of persons, near-persons, & the merely sentient
  •  86
    The Schopenhauerian challenge in environmental ethics
    Environmental Ethics 7 (3): 209-229. 1985.
    Environmental holism and environmental individualism are based on incompatible notions of moral considerability, and yield incompatible results. For Schopenhauer, every intelligible character--every irreducible instance of formative nature---defines a distinct moral patient, and for hirn both holistic entities and the individual members of higher species have distinguishable intelligible characters. Schopenhauer’s neglected metaethics thus can be used to generate an environmental ethics which is…Read more
  •  74
    In defense of the vegan ideal: Rhetoric and bias in the nutrition literature (review)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 7 (1): 29-40. 1994.
    Much of the scientific literature on vegetarian nutrition leaves one with the impression that vegan diets are significantly more risky than omnivorous ones, especially for individuals with high metabolic demands (such as pregnant or lactating women and children). But nutrition researchers have tended to skew their study populations toward new vegetarians, members of religious sects with especially restrictive diets and tendencies to eschew fortified foods and medical care, and these are arguably…Read more
  •  74
    Speciesism and Reverse Speciesism
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 14 (2). 2011.
    Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 171-173, June 2011
  •  73
    Utilitarianism and the evolution of ecological ethics
    Science and Engineering Ethics 14 (4): 551-573. 2008.
    R.M. Hare’s two-level utilitarianism provides a useful framework for understanding the evolution of codes of professional ethics. From a Harean perspective, the codes reflect both the fact that members of various professions face special kinds of ethically charged situations in the normal course of their work, and the need for people in special roles to acquire various habits of thought and action. This highlights the role of virtue in professional ethics and provides guidance to professional so…Read more
  •  54
    No holism without pluralism
    Environmental Ethics 13 (2): 175-179. 1991.
    In his recent essay on moral pluralism in environmental ethics, J. Baird Callicott exaggerates the advantages of monism, ignoring the environmentally unsound implications of Leopold’s holism. In addition, he fails to see that Leopold’s view requires the same kind of intellectual schitzophrenia for which he criticizes the version of moral pluralism advocated by Christopher D. Stone in Earth and Other Ethics. If itis plausible to say that holistic entities like ecosystems are directly morally cons…Read more
  •  38
    The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate (review)
    Environmental Ethics 15 (3): 279-282. 1993.
  •  37
    Sustainability (review)
    Environmental Ethics 29 (3): 307-312. 2007.
  •  35
    Review of Earth and Other Ethics (review)
    Environmental Ethics 10 (3): 259-265. 1988.
  •  33
    Review of Nicholas Agar. Life's Intrinsic Value (review)
    Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 413-416. 2003.
  •  29
    The Prospects for Consensus and Convergence in the Animal Rights Debate
    Hastings Center Report 24 (1): 24-28. 1994.
    Those who conduct research on animals and those who advocate on behalf of animals have more in common than is generally supposed. A more nuanced understanding of the arguments defending animals' interests can help replace the current politics of confrontation with a genuine conversation.
  •  26
    Precis of defending biodiversity
    Biology and Philosophy 35 (1): 1-4. 2020.
    Why should governments or individuals invest time and resources in conserving biodiversity? A popular answer is that biodiversity has both instrumental value for humans and intrinsic value in its own right. Defending Biodiversity critically evaluates familiar arguments for these claims and finds that, at best, they provide good reasons for conserving particular species or regions. However, they fail to provide a strong justification for conserving biodiversity per se. Hence, either environmental…Read more
  •  26
    The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate (review)
    Environmental Ethics 15 (3): 279-282. 1993.
  •  26
    A Harean Perspective on Humane Sustainability
    Ethics and the Environment 15 (2): 31. 2010.
    Animal well-being must be a primary normative consideration in a conception of humane sustainability. The two-level utilitarianism of R.M. Hare embodies aspects of both animal welfare and animal rights views, and in this paper I illustrate its application to questions about what counts as humane sustainability. Hare’s theory is highly controversial, and a thorough defense of it is beyond the scope of this paper, but the insightful way it provides of assessing various visions of humane sustainabi…Read more
  •  24
    An Overview of Engineering Approaches to Improving Agricultural Animal Welfare
    with Candace Croney, William Muir, Ji-Qin Ni, and Nicole Olynk Widmar
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (2): 143-159. 2018.
    In this essay, we provide an overview of how production systems can be re-engineered to improve the welfare of the animals involved. At least three potential options exist: engineering their environments to better fit the animals, engineering the animals themselves to better fit their environments, and eliminating the animals from the system by growing meat in vitro rather than on farms. The morality of consuming animal products and the conditions under which agricultural animals are maintained …Read more
  •  22
    Congress, Consistency, and Environmental Law
    with John Lemons and Donald A. Brown
    Environmental Ethics 12 (4): 311-327. 1990.
  •  15
    Sentientism
    In Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, Blackwell. 2001.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Contemporary sentientist ethics Is sentientism an “adequate” environmental ethic?
  •  13
    Review of Overtapped Oasis (review)
    Environmental Ethics 14 (1): 93-94. 1992.
  •  12
    No Holism without Pluralism
    Environmental Ethics 13 (2): 175-179. 1991.
    In his recent essay on moral pluralism in environmental ethics, J. Baird Callicott exaggerates the advantages of monism, ignoring the environmentally unsound implications of Leopold’s holism. In addition, he fails to see that Leopold’s view requires the same kind of intellectual schitzophrenia for which he criticizes the version of moral pluralism advocated by Christopher D. Stone in Earth and Other Ethics. If itis plausible to say that holistic entities like ecosystems are directly morally cons…Read more
  •  10
    Life’s Intrinsic Value (review)
    Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 413-416. 2003.
  •  10
    Review of Jean Kazez, Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (10). 2010.