This paper proposes a theoretical framework for understanding fat stigma and its impact on people’s well-being. It argues that stigma should never be used as a tool to achieve public health ends. Drawing on Bruce Link and Jo Phelan’s 2001 conceptualization of stigma as well as the works of Hilde Lindemann, Paul Benson, and Margaret Urban Walker on identity, positionality, and agency, this paper clarifies the mechanisms by which stigmatizing, oppressive conceptions of overweight and obesity damage identities and diminish moral (...) agency, arguing that the use of obesity-related stigma for public health ends violates the bioethics principles of nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. (shrink)

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

An argument against the bias towards the near; how a defence of temporal neutrality is not a defence of S; an appeal to inconsistency; why we should reject S and accept CP.

It is widely agreed that one of the core functions of government is to supply public goods that markets either fail to provide or cannot provide efficiently. I will suggest that arguments for government provision of public goods require fundamental moral judgments in addition to the usual economic considerations about the relative efficacy of markets and governments in supplying them. While philosophers and policymakers owe a debt of gratitude to economists for developing the theory of public goods, the link between (...) public goods and public policy cannot be forged without moral reflection on the proper function and scope of government power. (shrink)