•  126
    A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence
    with John Danaher, John Zerilli, Colin Gavaghan, Alistair Knott, Joy Liddicoat, and Merel Noorman
    MIT Press. 2021.
    A concise but informative overview of AI ethics and policy. Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracked up to be? If so, how is it changing the game? How is it likely to affect us as customers, tenants, aspiring homeowners, students, educators, patients, clients, prison inmates, members of ethnic and sexual minorities, and voters in liberal democracies? Authored by experts in fields rangin…Read more
  •  242
    The effective and ethical development of artificial intelligence: An opportunity to improve our wellbeing
    with Toby Walsh, Neil Levy, Genevieve Bell, Fiona Wood, Anthony Elliott, and Iven Mareels
    Australian Council of Learned Academies. 2019.
    This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine th…Read more
  •  363
    The impact of artificial intelligence on jobs and work in New Zealand
    with Colin Gavaghan and Alistair Knott
    New Zealand Law Foundation. 2021.
    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a diverse technology. It is already having significant effects on many jobs and sectors of the economy and over the next ten to twenty years it will drive profound changes in the way New Zealanders live and work. Within the workplace AI will have three dominant effects. This report (funded by the New Zealand Law Foundation) addresses: Chapter 1 Defining the Technology of Interest; Chapter 2 The changing nature and value of work; Chapter 3 AI and the employment rel…Read more
  •  23
    Government Use of Artificial Intelligence in New Zealand
    with Colin Gavighan, Ali Knott, John Zerilli, and Joy Liddicoat
    The New Zealand Law Foundation. 2019.
    Final Report on Phase 1 of the New Zealand Law Foundation’s Artificial Intelligence and Law in New Zealand Project.
  •  423
    This chapter explores the idea that phylogenetic diversity plays a unique role in underpinning conservation endeavour. The conservation of biodiversity is suffering from a rapid, unguided proliferation of metrics. Confusion is caused by the wide variety of contexts in which we make use of the idea of biodiversity. Characterisations of biodiversity range from all-variety-at-all-levels down to variety with respect to single variables relevant to very specific conservation contexts. Accepting biodi…Read more
  •  906
    The Resurrection of Innateness
    The Monist 85 (1): 105-130. 2002.
    The notion of innateness is widely used, particularly in philosophy of mind, cognitive science and linguistics. Despite this popularity, it remains a controversial idea. This is partly because of the variety of ways in which it can be explicated and partly because it appears to embody the suggestion that we can determine the relative causal contributions of genes and environment in the development of biological individuals. As these causes are not independent, the claim is metaphysically suspect…Read more
  •  22
    Predator free New Zealand: Social, cultural, and ethical challenges
    with L. Ellis, M. Hohneck, C. Irons, J. Knight, K. Littin, E. MacDonald, C. Speedy, T. Steeves, K. Watene, P. Wehi, and E. Parke
  •  292
    Transparency in Algorithmic and Human Decision-Making: Is There a Double Standard?
    with John Zerilli, Alistair Knott, and Colin Gavaghan
    Philosophy and Technology 32 (4): 661-683. 2018.
    We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency pro…Read more
  •  52
    Algorithmic Decision-Making and the Control Problem
    with John Zerilli, Alistair Knott, and Colin Gavaghan
    Minds and Machines 29 (4): 555-578. 2019.
    The danger of human operators devolving responsibility to machines and failing to detect cases where they fail has been recognised for many years by industrial psychologists and engineers studying the human operators of complex machines. We call it “the control problem”, understood as the tendency of the human within a human–machine control loop to become complacent, over-reliant or unduly diffident when faced with the outputs of a reliable autonomous system. While the control problem has been i…Read more
  •  22
    How to defeat complexity
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (3). 1998.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  54
    The Good, the Bad and the Impossible
    Biology and Philosophy 18 (3): 463-476. 2003.
    Philosophers differ widely in the extent to which they condone the exploration of the realms of possibilia. Some are very enamoured of thought experiments in which human intuition is trained upon the products of human imagination. Others are much more sceptical of the fruits of such purely cognitive explorations. That said, it is clear that human beings cannot dispense with modal speculation altogether. Rationality rests upon the ability to make decisions and that in turn rests upon the ability …Read more
  •  121
    What Shall We Do with Analytic Metaphysics? A Response to McLeod and Parsons
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (1). 2013.
    (2013). What Shall We Do with Analytic Metaphysics? A Response to McLeod and Parsons. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 91, No. 1, pp. 179-182. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2012.762029
  •  24
    The purpose of progress: A response to Schubert
    with Tim Cochrane
    Journal of Bioeconomics. 2013.
    This article responds to a commentary by Christian Schubert on our 'Evolvability and Progress in Evolutionary Economics'. Our response elaborates the key disagreement between Schubert and us, namely, our views about the purpose of an account of progress in evolutionary economics.
  •  76
    Edited book containing the following essays: 1 Getting over Gettier, Alan Musgrave.- 2 Justified Believing: Avoiding the Paradox Gregory W. Dawes.- 3 Literature and Truthfulness,Gregory Currie.- 4 Where the Buck-passing Stops, Andrew Moore.- 5 Universal Darwinism: Its Scope and Limits, James Maclaurin, - 6 The Future of Utilitarianism,Tim Mulgan. 7 Kant on Experiment, Alberto Vanzo.- 8 Did Newton ʻFeignʼ the Corpuscular Hypothesis? Kirsten Walsh.- 9 The Progress of Scotland: The Edinburgh Phil…Read more
  •  24
    A new science of religion (edited book)
    Routledge. 2013.
    This volume examines the diversity of new scientific theories of religion, by outlining the logical and causal relationships between these enterprises.
  •  22
    The Resurrection Of Innateness
    The Monist 85 (1): 105-130. 2002.
    The idea that some biological characteristics are innate, while controversial, is widespread in many academic disciplines. Neither philosophy nor science has outgrown the need to talk about traits, which, for a variety of reasons, appear to be inherent in biological populations. Philosophical claims of this nature are to be found in theories of moral sense, rational capacities, the way in which perception structures experience and so on. Scientific claims about innate traits are to be found in t…Read more
  •  61
    In Molecular Models: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar presents a historical and philosophical analysis of four important themes in philosophy of science that have been influenced by discoveries in molecular biology. These are: reduction, function, information and directed mutation. I argue that there is an important difference between the cases of function and information and the more complex case of scientific reduction. In the former cases it makes sense to taxonomise …Read more
  •  44
    Many things evolve: species, languages, sports, tools, biological niches, and theories. But are these real instances of natural selection? Current assessments of the proper scope of Darwinian theory focus on the broad similarity of cultural or non-organic processes to familiar central instances of natural selection. That similarity is analysed in terms of abstract functional descriptions of evolving entities (e.g. replicators, interactors, developmental systems etc). These strategies have produc…Read more
  •  83
    Evolutionary Explanations of Temporal Experience
    In Heather Dyke & Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 521-535. 2013.
    A common approach in the Philosophy of Time, particularly in enquiry into the metaphysical nature of time, has been to examine various aspects of the nature of human temporal experience, and ask what, if anything, can be discerned from this about the nature of time itself. Many human traits have explanations that reside in facts about our evolutionary history. We ask whether features of human temporal experience might admit of such evolutionary explanations. We then consider the implications of …Read more
  •  402
    What is Analytic Metaphysics For?
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2): 291-306. 2012.
    We divide analytic metaphysics into naturalistic and non-naturalistic metaphysics. The latter we define as any philosophical theory that makes some ontological (as opposed to conceptual) claim, where that ontological claim has no observable consequences. We discuss further features of non-naturalistic metaphysics, including its methodology of appealing to intuition, and we explain the way in which we take it to be discontinuous with science. We outline and criticize Ladyman and Ross's 2007 epist…Read more
  •  59
    Commentary on “The transmission sense of information” by Carl T. Bergstrom and Martin Rosvall Content Type Journal Article Pages 191-194 DOI 10.1007/s10539-010-9233-3 Authors James Maclaurin, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Journal Biology and Philosophy Online ISSN 1572-8404 Print ISSN 0169-3867 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 2
  •  161
    What is Biodiversity?
    University of Chicago Press. 2008.
    What Is Biodiversity? is a theoretical and conceptual exploration of the biological world and how diversity is valued. Maclaurin and Sterelny explore not only the origins of the concept of biodiversity, but also how that concept has been shaped by ecology and more recently by conservation biology. They explain the different types of biodiversity important in evolutionary theory, developmental biology, ecology, morphology and taxonomy and conclude that biological heritage is rich in not just one …Read more
  •  31
    Fitness: Philosophical Problems
    Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. 2001.
    A philosophical discussion of conceptual and theoretical issues raised by the scientific use of the term ‘fitness’ to describe a property of evolving systems.
  •  52
    Reinventing molecular weismannism: Information in evolution (review)
    Biology and Philosophy 13 (1): 37-59. 1998.
    Molecular Weismannism is the claim that: “In the development of an individual, DNA causes the production both of DNA (genetic material) and of protein (somatic material). The reverse process never occurs. Protein is never a cause of DNA”. This principle underpins both the idea that genes are the objects upon which natural selection operates and the idea that traits can be divided into those that are genetic and those that are not. Recent work in developmental biology and in philosophy of biology…Read more
  •  217
    If, as the new tenseless theory of time maintains, there are no tensed facts, then why do our emotional lives seem to suggest that there are? This question originates with Prior’s ‘Thank Goodness That’s Over’ problem, and still presents a significant challenge to the new B-theory of time. We argue that this challenge has more dimensions to it than has been appreciated by those involved in the debate so far. We present an analysis of the challenge, showing the different questions that a B-theoris…Read more
  • The Innate / Acquired Distinction
    In Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Routledge. 2006.
  •  26
    Why Minds Evolve (review)
    Metascience 11 (1): 127-130. 2002.
    A review of Kim Sterleny's The Evolution of Agency and Other Essays