Dr Dan Cavedon-Taylor

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. My thesis, on how pictures function as sources of knowledge, was funded 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.

Most of my research is now in philosophy of mind. I'm currently writing a book on mental imagery. Representative publications:

• What Did Perky Prove? – Ergo 2026.
• Mental Imagery: Greasing the Mind's Gears - Philosophers' Imprint 2023.
• Aphantasia and Psychological Disorder: Current Connections, Defining the Imagery Deficit and Future Directions – Frontiers in Psychology (Psychopathology) 2022.
• Predictive Processing and Perception: What does Imagining have to do with it? – Consciousness and Cognition 2021.
• Mental Imagery: Pulling the Plug on Perceptualism – Philosophical Studies 2021.
• Untying the Knot: Imagination, Perception and their Neural Substrates – Synthese 2021.

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

I am an Associate Editor of 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 aligns with my own.

Research interests

Philosophy of mind 

Aside from mental imagery, I also work on perception and mental health conditions. Representative publications:

• with Sam Wilkinson (eds.) Depression: Philosophical Perspectives and Clinical Voices. Oxford University Press, under contract.
• Must Depression be Irrational? – Synthese 2024.
• High-Level Perception and Multimodal Perception – In Logue and Richardson (ed.) Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception. Oxford University Press. 2021.
• Odors, Objects and Olfaction – American Philosophical Quarterly 2018.
• Naive Realism and the Cognitive Penetrability of Perception – Analytic Philosophy 2018.
• Touching Voids – Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2017.
• Perceptual Content and Sensorimotor Expectations – Philosophical Quarterly 2011.

Deepfakes and Photographs

Following my PhD, I've written extensively about photographic images. Some of that research, particularly on deepfakes, overlaps with social epistemology. Representative publications:

• Deepfakes and Democracy: A Catch-22? - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2025.
• Deepfakes: A Survey and Introduction to the Topical Collection – Synthese 2024.
• Designed to Deceive? The Philosophy of Deepfakes – Special issue of Synthese 2023.
• Arrangement and Timing: Photography, Causation and Anti-Empiricist Aesthetics – Ergo 2021.
• Photographically Based Knowledge – Episteme 2013.

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
• Epistemology
• Normative Ethics
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mind and Psychology

I have contributed to teaching across all levels at the OU, having written 12 full units and 2 half units.

I have written teaching materials for the Level 1 module D113 Global Challenges: Social Science in Action (on global justice) and for the Level 2 module DA223: Investigating Philosophy (on the mind–body problem). 

I am Production Chair for DA333: Philosophy in Action. This is a brand-new Level 3 philosophy module for which I am writing on topics in social epistemology (trusting experts, conspiracy theories and peer disagreement), the ethics of war (drone warfare, heritage in war and combat trauma) and free will (compatibilism and contemporary free will scepticism).

I also give lectures on consciousness and the emotions on our highly successful MA in Philosophy.

Impact and engagement

I have featured on BBC News' now sadly defunct technology programme Click, where I was interviewed on the malicious use of fabricated, AI-generated images.

Derek Matravers and I created Philosophy in the Open: The OU Philosophy Media Archive, an online exhibtion containing 30+ hours of footage of interviews and debates between some of the most celebrated mid-to-late 20th century British philosophers.

I have given public talks at art galleries and written for scholarly blogs, such as Junkyard of the Mind and Imperfect Cognitions.