Hugh Breakey
Biographic Data
| ID | 2237762 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hugh Breakey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hugh |
| FAMILY NAME | Breakey |
| SIGNATURE | BREAKEY H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5170-2091 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Ethical Wrongdoing of Morally Objectionable Nimbys
Moral Tolerance
In many practical contemporary contexts, people need to make correct ethical judgements about how to respond to perceived wrongdoing—in particular, whether to punish it or tolerate it. This judgement can be challenging when the wrongdoer does not accept the allegation of wrongdoing at the level of moral principle, holding that the type of action in question was not wrong. This paper interrogates the ethics of using social (as opposed to official)…
Is Rational Manipulation Permissible
Rational manipulation is constituted by the following conditions: (i) A aims to persuade B of thesis X; (ii) A holds X to be true and rationally justifiable; (iii) A knows of the existence of evidence, argument or information Y. While Y is not itself misinformation (Y is factually correct), A suspects B might take Y as important evidence for not-X; (iv) A deliberately chooses not to mention Y to B, out of a concern that it could mislead B into be…
Social equity indicators for a Blue Economy
Social equity goals are specifically stated in most new ocean management and development plans, notably those aligned with a Blue Economy that recognizes the significant and rising inequities across ocean spaces and sectors. However, the deeper significance of social equity has still not been fully integrated in policy and management practices, which often ask why it is relevant and how it can be measured in ways comparable to more familiar ecolo…
Fair winds
Benefits or bribes? Ethical concerns with the potential corruption of civic obligations through community benefits schemes for wind farms
Community benefit schemes have become a common feature of new energy industries, and are especially prevalent in renewable energy developments like wind farms. These schemes arise when businesses—either under their own discretion or in compliance with policy mechanisms—establish systems to deliver in-kind and monetary goods to local communities. The schemes may be morally justified on several grounds, including compensation and distributive fairn…
Rethinking blue economy governance – A blue economy equity model as an approach to operationalise equity
The blue economy was originally conceptualised as having a strong focus on social equity; however, in practice, these equity considerations have been overshadowed by neo-liberal capitalist agendas, which have become dominant in blue economy discourse. A continued expansion of ocean industry developments and activities has resulted in an inequitable share of the burdens and benefits of utilising ocean spaces and has exacerbated wealth disparities …
When normal is normative
People give surprising weight to others’ expectations about their behaviour. I argue the practice of conforming to others’ expectations is ethically well-grounded. A special class of ‘reasonable expectations’ can create prima facie obligations even in cases where the expectations arise from contingent pre-existing practices, and the duty-bearer has not created them, or directly benefited from them. The obligation arises because of the substantial…
“That’s Unhelpful, Harmful and Offensive!” Epistemic and Ethical Concerns with Meta-argument Allegations
Migrant health professionals’ systemic human rights vulnerabilities
This article investigates whether the methods by which states implement citizens’ human rights possess serious weaknesses for ensuring migrant health professionals’ rights. Stemming from the discipline of normative philosophy, the moral approach to human rights sees rights as implemented through multiple waves of duties delivered by state‐managed integrity systems. We argue that this otherwise comparatively reliable method can fail to deliver ade…
National Exams as a Tool for Improving Standards
Can a national exam contribute to raising service standards in a particular sector – one with quasi-professional elements and aspirations? We explore this question in the specific context of financial advisers and planners in contemporary Australia and the regulation efforts and professionalisation processes occurring therein. Notwithstanding this focus, we inform the discussion by considering wider uses of the exam in other jurisdictions, and al…
Building Ethics Regimes
Every day, people make moral decisions, and perform actions based on those decisions. These occurrences’ quotidian nature can obscure the fact that many distinct processes must be successfully navigated for principled moral action to take place. Agents need to be sensitive to situational factors that call for moral consideration they need to be capable of reflecting on those features to arrive at a justifiable judgment about the proper course of …
Employed Professionals’ Ethical Responsibilities in Public Service and Private Enterprise
Traditionally, most professionals operated as sole practitioners or in small partnerships. This work environment affected professions' images of themselves and the way their ethics was conceived and written. But the locus of practice has changed and is continuing to change. Though the common image of professionals remains of sole practitioners serving individual clients on a one-toone basis, many of the most senior professionals work within large…
C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism
C. B. Macpherson’s 1962 The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke challenged the canonical interpretation of seventeenth-century English political theorists by exploring their allegiance to “possessive individualism,” the idea that man’s normative essence consists in his self-ownership. After surveying the work’s impact, this chapter analyzes Macpherson’s concept of possessive individualism and considers the inter-relation…
Compromise Despite Conviction
Conceptualizing Personal and Institutional Integrity
In this paper, we present a conceptual and terminological system – what we term the ‘Comprehensive Integrity Framework’ – capable of applying to both personal and institutional integrity, and to different levels of institutions (including sub-institutions and institutional complexes). We distinguish between three sorts of integrity: consistency-integrity (whether the agent’s acts accord with her claimed values); coherence-integrity (whether the a…
Parsing M acpherson
C . B . M acpherson's “ P ossessive I ndividualist” reading of Locke is one of the most radical and influential interpretations in the history of exegesis. Despite a substantial critical response over the past five decades, M acpherson's reading remains orthodox in various circles in the humanities generally, particularly in legal studies, and his interpretation of several crucial passages has unwittingly been followed even by his sharpest critic…
Weak Links in the Chain of Authority
The United Nations Security Council mandates peacekeeping operations to protect civilians, and regularly authorizes operations to use force to achieve this objective. Yet in the challenging situations facing contemporary peacekeeping operations, local civilians remain vulnerable to extreme violence. One set of reasons for this unwelcome result surrounds the decisions to protect civilians forcefully in any given context. This paper describes how p…
Positive Duties and Human Rights
Can human rights impose positive duties to act, as well as negative duties constraining action? At first glance there seem to be strong reasons for wishing human rights could impose positive duties – such reasons include the promotion of welfare rights and the positive protection of liberty rights (e.g. police protection against assault). However, any attempt to construct rights-based positive duties threatens to dissolve hallmark features of rig…
Protection Norms and Human Rights
In the international context, human rights are rarely secured by the black letter of law, but rather by the soft laws, political policies and moral prescriptions of protection norms . Two key international protection norms are the well-established Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (PoC) and – recently added in the last decade – the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Yet there is substantial confusion about the specific nature of these two …
Property, Persons, Boundaries
Should one individual have, prior to any consent, property rights in another person? Libertarians answer that they should not – and that this commitment requires rejecting all positive duties. Liberal-egalitarians largely agree with the libertarian’s answer to the question, but deny the corollary they draw from it, arguing that egalitarian regimes do not require other-ownership. Drawing on recent property theory I argue both sides are mistaken, a…
Natural Intellectual Property Rights and the Public Domain
No natural rights theory justifies strong intellectual property rights. More specifically, no theory within the entire domain of natural rights thinking – encompassing classical liberalism, libertarianism and left‐libertarianism, in all their innumerable variants – coherently supports strengthening current intellectual property rights. Despite their many important differences, all these natural rights theories endorse some set of members of a com…
The Epistemic and Informational Requirements of Utilitarianism
A recurring objection confronting utilitarianism is that its dictates require information that lies beyond the bounds of human epistemic wherewithal. Utilitarians require reliable knowledge of the social consequences of various policies, and of people's preferences and utilities. Agreeing partly with the sceptics, I concur that the general rules of thumb offered by social science do not provide sufficient justification for the utilitarian legisla…
Liberalism and intellectual property rights
Justifications for intellectual property rights are typically made in terms of utility or natural property rights. In this article, I justify limited regimes of copyright and patent grounded in no more than the rights to use our ideas and to contract, conjoined at times with a weak right to hold property in tangibles. I describe the Contracting Situation plausibly arising from vesting rational agents with these rights. I go on to consider whether…
Without Consent
A controversy in political philosophy and applied ethics concerns the validity of duty-imposing powers, that is, rights entitling one person to impose new duties on others without their consent. Many philosophers have criticized as unplausible any such moral right, in particular that of appropriating private property unilaterally. Some, finding duty-imposing powers weird, unfamiliar or baseless, have argued that principles of justified acquisitio…
Weak Links in the Chain of Authority
The United Nations Security Council mandates peacekeeping operations to protect civilians, and regularly authorizes operations to use force to achieve this objective. Yet in the challenging situations facing contemporary peacekeeping operations, local civilians remain vulnerable to extreme violence. One set of reasons for this unwelcome result surrounds the decisions to protect civilians forcefully in any given context. This paper describes how p…
Rethinking blue economy governance – A blue economy equity model as an approach to operationalise equity
The blue economy was originally conceptualised as having a strong focus on social equity; however, in practice, these equity considerations have been overshadowed by neo-liberal capitalist agendas, which have become dominant in blue economy discourse. A continued expansion of ocean industry developments and activities has resulted in an inequitable share of the burdens and benefits of utilising ocean spaces and has exacerbated wealth disparities …
Benefits or bribes? Ethical concerns with the potential corruption of civic obligations through community benefits schemes for wind farms
Community benefit schemes have become a common feature of new energy industries, and are especially prevalent in renewable energy developments like wind farms. These schemes arise when businesses—either under their own discretion or in compliance with policy mechanisms—establish systems to deliver in-kind and monetary goods to local communities. The schemes may be morally justified on several grounds, including compensation and distributive fairn…
Migrant health professionals’ systemic human rights vulnerabilities
This article investigates whether the methods by which states implement citizens’ human rights possess serious weaknesses for ensuring migrant health professionals’ rights. Stemming from the discipline of normative philosophy, the moral approach to human rights sees rights as implemented through multiple waves of duties delivered by state‐managed integrity systems. We argue that this otherwise comparatively reliable method can fail to deliver ade…
Protection Norms and Human Rights
In the international context, human rights are rarely secured by the black letter of law, but rather by the soft laws, political policies and moral prescriptions of protection norms . Two key international protection norms are the well-established Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (PoC) and – recently added in the last decade – the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Yet there is substantial confusion about the specific nature of these two …
Liberalism and intellectual property rights
Justifications for intellectual property rights are typically made in terms of utility or natural property rights. In this article, I justify limited regimes of copyright and patent grounded in no more than the rights to use our ideas and to contract, conjoined at times with a weak right to hold property in tangibles. I describe the Contracting Situation plausibly arising from vesting rational agents with these rights. I go on to consider whether…
Without Consent
A controversy in political philosophy and applied ethics concerns the validity of duty-imposing powers, that is, rights entitling one person to impose new duties on others without their consent. Many philosophers have criticized as unplausible any such moral right, in particular that of appropriating private property unilaterally. Some, finding duty-imposing powers weird, unfamiliar or baseless, have argued that principles of justified acquisitio…
The Epistemic and Informational Requirements of Utilitarianism
A recurring objection confronting utilitarianism is that its dictates require information that lies beyond the bounds of human epistemic wherewithal. Utilitarians require reliable knowledge of the social consequences of various policies, and of people's preferences and utilities. Agreeing partly with the sceptics, I concur that the general rules of thumb offered by social science do not provide sufficient justification for the utilitarian legisla…
Liberalism and intellectual property rights
Justifications for intellectual property rights are typically made in terms of utility or natural property rights. In this article, I justify limited regimes of copyright and patent grounded in no more than the rights to use our ideas and to contract, conjoined at times with a weak right to hold property in tangibles. I describe the Contracting Situation plausibly arising from vesting rational agents with these rights. I go on to consider whether…
Natural Intellectual Property Rights and the Public Domain
No natural rights theory justifies strong intellectual property rights. More specifically, no theory within the entire domain of natural rights thinking – encompassing classical liberalism, libertarianism and left‐libertarianism, in all their innumerable variants – coherently supports strengthening current intellectual property rights. Despite their many important differences, all these natural rights theories endorse some set of members of a com…
Property, Persons, Boundaries
Should one individual have, prior to any consent, property rights in another person? Libertarians answer that they should not – and that this commitment requires rejecting all positive duties. Liberal-egalitarians largely agree with the libertarian’s answer to the question, but deny the corollary they draw from it, arguing that egalitarian regimes do not require other-ownership. Drawing on recent property theory I argue both sides are mistaken, a…
Protection Norms and Human Rights
In the international context, human rights are rarely secured by the black letter of law, but rather by the soft laws, political policies and moral prescriptions of protection norms . Two key international protection norms are the well-established Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (PoC) and – recently added in the last decade – the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Yet there is substantial confusion about the specific nature of these two …
Parsing M acpherson
C . B . M acpherson's “ P ossessive I ndividualist” reading of Locke is one of the most radical and influential interpretations in the history of exegesis. Despite a substantial critical response over the past five decades, M acpherson's reading remains orthodox in various circles in the humanities generally, particularly in legal studies, and his interpretation of several crucial passages has unwittingly been followed even by his sharpest critic…
Weak Links in the Chain of Authority
The United Nations Security Council mandates peacekeeping operations to protect civilians, and regularly authorizes operations to use force to achieve this objective. Yet in the challenging situations facing contemporary peacekeeping operations, local civilians remain vulnerable to extreme violence. One set of reasons for this unwelcome result surrounds the decisions to protect civilians forcefully in any given context. This paper describes how p…
Positive Duties and Human Rights
Can human rights impose positive duties to act, as well as negative duties constraining action? At first glance there seem to be strong reasons for wishing human rights could impose positive duties – such reasons include the promotion of welfare rights and the positive protection of liberty rights (e.g. police protection against assault). However, any attempt to construct rights-based positive duties threatens to dissolve hallmark features of rig…
Conceptualizing Personal and Institutional Integrity
In this paper, we present a conceptual and terminological system – what we term the ‘Comprehensive Integrity Framework’ – capable of applying to both personal and institutional integrity, and to different levels of institutions (including sub-institutions and institutional complexes). We distinguish between three sorts of integrity: consistency-integrity (whether the agent’s acts accord with her claimed values); coherence-integrity (whether the a…
C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism
C. B. Macpherson’s 1962 The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke challenged the canonical interpretation of seventeenth-century English political theorists by exploring their allegiance to “possessive individualism,” the idea that man’s normative essence consists in his self-ownership. After surveying the work’s impact, this chapter analyzes Macpherson’s concept of possessive individualism and considers the inter-relation…
Compromise Despite Conviction
National Exams as a Tool for Improving Standards
Can a national exam contribute to raising service standards in a particular sector – one with quasi-professional elements and aspirations? We explore this question in the specific context of financial advisers and planners in contemporary Australia and the regulation efforts and professionalisation processes occurring therein. Notwithstanding this focus, we inform the discussion by considering wider uses of the exam in other jurisdictions, and al…
Building Ethics Regimes
Every day, people make moral decisions, and perform actions based on those decisions. These occurrences’ quotidian nature can obscure the fact that many distinct processes must be successfully navigated for principled moral action to take place. Agents need to be sensitive to situational factors that call for moral consideration they need to be capable of reflecting on those features to arrive at a justifiable judgment about the proper course of …
Employed Professionals’ Ethical Responsibilities in Public Service and Private Enterprise
Traditionally, most professionals operated as sole practitioners or in small partnerships. This work environment affected professions' images of themselves and the way their ethics was conceived and written. But the locus of practice has changed and is continuing to change. Though the common image of professionals remains of sole practitioners serving individual clients on a one-toone basis, many of the most senior professionals work within large…
“That’s Unhelpful, Harmful and Offensive!” Epistemic and Ethical Concerns with Meta-argument Allegations
Migrant health professionals’ systemic human rights vulnerabilities
This article investigates whether the methods by which states implement citizens’ human rights possess serious weaknesses for ensuring migrant health professionals’ rights. Stemming from the discipline of normative philosophy, the moral approach to human rights sees rights as implemented through multiple waves of duties delivered by state‐managed integrity systems. We argue that this otherwise comparatively reliable method can fail to deliver ade…
When normal is normative
People give surprising weight to others’ expectations about their behaviour. I argue the practice of conforming to others’ expectations is ethically well-grounded. A special class of ‘reasonable expectations’ can create prima facie obligations even in cases where the expectations arise from contingent pre-existing practices, and the duty-bearer has not created them, or directly benefited from them. The obligation arises because of the substantial…
Rethinking blue economy governance – A blue economy equity model as an approach to operationalise equity
The blue economy was originally conceptualised as having a strong focus on social equity; however, in practice, these equity considerations have been overshadowed by neo-liberal capitalist agendas, which have become dominant in blue economy discourse. A continued expansion of ocean industry developments and activities has resulted in an inequitable share of the burdens and benefits of utilising ocean spaces and has exacerbated wealth disparities …
Is Rational Manipulation Permissible
Rational manipulation is constituted by the following conditions: (i) A aims to persuade B of thesis X; (ii) A holds X to be true and rationally justifiable; (iii) A knows of the existence of evidence, argument or information Y. While Y is not itself misinformation (Y is factually correct), A suspects B might take Y as important evidence for not-X; (iv) A deliberately chooses not to mention Y to B, out of a concern that it could mislead B into be…
Social equity indicators for a Blue Economy
Social equity goals are specifically stated in most new ocean management and development plans, notably those aligned with a Blue Economy that recognizes the significant and rising inequities across ocean spaces and sectors. However, the deeper significance of social equity has still not been fully integrated in policy and management practices, which often ask why it is relevant and how it can be measured in ways comparable to more familiar ecolo…
Fair winds
Benefits or bribes? Ethical concerns with the potential corruption of civic obligations through community benefits schemes for wind farms
Community benefit schemes have become a common feature of new energy industries, and are especially prevalent in renewable energy developments like wind farms. These schemes arise when businesses—either under their own discretion or in compliance with policy mechanisms—establish systems to deliver in-kind and monetary goods to local communities. The schemes may be morally justified on several grounds, including compensation and distributive fairn…
The Ethical Wrongdoing of Morally Objectionable Nimbys
Moral Tolerance
In many practical contemporary contexts, people need to make correct ethical judgements about how to respond to perceived wrongdoing—in particular, whether to punish it or tolerate it. This judgement can be challenging when the wrongdoer does not accept the allegation of wrongdoing at the level of moral principle, holding that the type of action in question was not wrong. This paper interrogates the ethics of using social (as opposed to official)…
Political science (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Law and economics (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works)