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Dr Dan Cavedon-Taylor

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Senior Lecturer
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Social Sciences & Global Studies
  • Philosophy
  • dan.cavedon-taylor

Professional biography

I joined the Open University in 2019, having previously worked at the universities of Southampton, Oxford, St Andrews and Antwerp. 

I received my PhD in 2011 from Birkbeck, University of London for a thesis on how we learn about the world through pictures, as opposed to via direct perception or the words of other people. My doctoral studies were supported by the inaugural British Society of Aesthetics PhD Studentship and a Royal Institute of Philosophy Jacobsen Fellowship. I also spent time at the University of Oxford as a visiting student.

After my PhD, most of my research moved into the philosophies of mind, perception, psychology and psychiatry. I'm writing a book on mental imagery and most of my current research concerns the roles played by imagery in human cognition, including various mental health conditions. Some representative publications in this area include:

From 2012-2021 I was Treasurer of the British Society of Aesthetics.

I am an Associate Editor for the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

​I currently supervise PhD students in aesthetics, the philosophy of mind and history of philosophy. I have slim capacity to take on additional doctoral students, but would be happy to hear from potential applicants whose research directly alligns with my own.

Research interests

Philosophy of mind 

I'm interested in all aspects of the workings of the mind, but find perception and mental imagery particularly fascinating. Representative publications:

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

I'm interested in the aesthetic and epistemic nature of pictures, as well as aesthetic judgment and appreciation. Following on from my PhD, I've written a great deal about photographic pictures and some of that work--particularly on deepfakes--shades into social epistemology. Representative publications:

Other topics

I've also written some things in philosophy of religion and mainstream epistemology. 

Teaching interests

  • Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
  • Early Modern Philosophy
  • Normative Ethics
  • Metaphysics
  • Philosophy of Religion
  • Philosophy of Mind and Psychology

I have written teaching materials for DD113 Global Challenges: Social Science in Action on global justice and for DA223: Investigating Philosophy on the mind-body problem. I give lectures on consciousness and the emotions for Philosophy MA students and run forum activities on collective knowledge for students of A333: Key Questions in Philosophy. I am currently chairing a rewrite of the latter module. 

Impact and engagement

I have featured on the BBC News Channel programme Click where I was interviewed on the malicious use of fabricated, photorealistic images. I have also given public talks at art galleries and written for various blogs.

Publications

Must depression be irrational? (2024-08-21)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Synthese, 204, Article 79

Deepfakes: a survey and introduction to the topical collection (2024-06-26)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Synthese, 204, Article 14 (2024)(1)

Mental Imagery: Greasing the Mind's Gears (2024-02)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Philosophers' Imprint, 23, Article 23

Magic, Alief and Make-Believe (2024)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ((In press))

Predictive Processing and Perception: What does Imagining have to do with it? (2022-11)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Consciousness and Cognition, 106, Article 103419

Scalar Epistemic Consequentialism (2022-03)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 11(1)

Aphantasia and psychological disorder: Current connections, defining the imagery deficit and future directions (2022)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 822989

Arrangement and Timing: Photography, Causation and Anti-Empiricist Aesthetics (2021-10-22)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Ergo, 7, Article 33 (pp. 877-903)

Sensorimotor Expectations and the Visual Field (2021)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Synthese, 198 (pp. 3991-4006)

Are the Psychophysical Laws Fine-Tuned? (2021)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 89 (pp. 285-292)

Mental imagery: pulling the plug on perceptualism (2021)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Philosophical Studies, 178 (pp. 3847-3868)

Untying the knot: imagination, perception and their neural substrates (2021)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Synthese, 199 (pp. 7203-7230)

“Categories of Art” at 50: An Introduction (2020)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 78(1) (pp. 65-66)

Naïve Realism and the Cognitive Penetrability of Perception (2018-09)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Analytic Philosophy, 59(3) (pp. 391-412)

Odors, Objects and Olfaction (2018-01-01)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
American Philosophical Quarterly, 55(1) (pp. 81-94)

Touching Voids: On the Varieties of Absence Perception (2017-06)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2) (pp. 355-366)

Reasoned and Unreasoned Judgement: On Inference, Acquaintance and Aesthetic Normativity (2017-02-20)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
The British Journal of Aesthetics, 57(1) (pp. 1-17)

Book review of The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch, by Matthew Fulkerson, and Does Perception Have Content?, by Berit Brogaard (ed.) (2015-10)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
The Philosophical Quarterly, 65(261) (pp. 833-838)

Photographic Phenomenology as Cognitive Phenomenology (2015-04-16)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
The British Journal of Aesthetics, 55(1) (pp. 71-89)

Kind Properties and the Metaphysics of Perception: Towards Impure Relationalism (2015)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96(4) (pp. 487-509)

Belief, Experience and the Act of Picture-Making (2014)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Philosophical Explorations, 17(1) (pp. 35-48)

Photographically Based Knowledge (2013-09)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Episteme, 10(3) (pp. 283-297)

Book review of The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology, by Elisabeth Schellekens and Peter Goldie (eds) (2013-01)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Mind, 122(485) (pp. 319-324)

Seeing and Retinal Stability (2013)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Philosophical Psychology, 26(2) (pp. 263-266)

The Space of Seeing-In (2011-07)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
The British Journal of Aesthetics, 51(3) (pp. 271-278)

Perceptual Content and Sensorimotor Expectations (2011-04)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
The Philosophical Quarterly, 61(243) (pp. 383-391)

In Defence of Fictional Incompetence (2010-06)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Ratio, 23(2) (pp. 141-150)

Still Epiphenomenal Qualia: Response to Muller (2009-03)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
Philosophia, 37(1) (pp. 105-107)

The Epistemic Status of Photographs and Paintings: A Response to Cohen and Meskin (2009)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67(2) (pp. 230-235)

Life Through a Lens: Aesthetic Virtue and Salience vs Kantian Disinterest (2022)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
In: Archer, Sophie ed. Salience: A Philosophical Inquiry
Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

High-Level Perception and Multimodal Perception (2021-06-10)
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
In: Logue, Heather and Richardson, Louise eds. Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception (pp. 147-173)
Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford, UK