Dr Henry Taylor

Department of Philosophy
Associate Professor

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 6309
Email: j.h.taylor.1@bham.ac.uk

Address: 247, ERI Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Since joining the department in 2017, my work has focussed mainly on the interface between philosophy and STEM subjects. Much of my work is on interdisciplinary topics connected to consciousness, perception, and attention. I'm also very interested in robotics, especially the project of making robots more culturally sensitive. My work in these areas is collected in my papers (below).

One of my current interests is in the realm of psychological natural kinds. Broadly, the study of natural kinds is the study of scientific categories and categorisation. Both scientists and laypeople typically divide the mind up into a variety of different faculties (such as memory, emotions, consciousness, vision and so on). I am interested in how these categorisation judgements are made, and how they help psychologists achieve scientific success.

I am also fascinated by cultural robotics. People from different cultural backgrounds have different expectations around robots and robotics, including things like personal space, expression of emotion, cultural habits, etc. I'm interested in questions like the following: Can we design robots to behave in ways that differ depending on the cultural preferences of the humans they're interacting with? Should we do this? What does 'culture' even mean in robotics?

Henry Taylor at Google scholar

Feedback and office hours

Students should check the PTR Education hub to see when my office hours will run.

Qualifications

BA (hons) (Durham)
MPhil (Cambridge)
PhD (Durham)

Biography

I am a Birmingham Fellow. I joined the department in 2017. Since joining Birmingham, I’ve worked mainly in the philosophy of cognitive science, especially on perception.

Before that, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge for two years. I worked mainly on the metaphysics of properties, and the importance of properties for understanding consciousness.

I got my PhD in 2015 from the University of Durham. My thesis was on attention. For this, I was supported by the University, and by the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Teaching

In the academic year 2018-19, I will be teaching the Metaphysics MA, Philosophy of Language MA, Key Readings (1st year undergraduate) and Philosophy of Biology (3rd year undergraduate) courses.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome enquiries from anyone working in any area of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, or philosophy of cognitive science.

Find out more - our PhD Philosophy page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

I’m particularly interested in:

Consciousness (How does consciousness fit into the physical world? How should we study consciousness in nonhuman animals and infants?)
Perception (What is the best way to understand how we perceive the world? Does perception require consciousness?)
Attention (What is attention? Can we understand consciousness by using attention? Is attention ‘one thing’ or is it actually many different mental faculties?)
Natural kinds in cognitive science (How should we understand the categories employed by cognitive science? How do they contribute to scientific success?)

I’m currently writing a monograph on natural kinds in psychology.

Another strand on my research concerns peripheral vision: how we should understand our visual capacities outside of the centre of our visual field. This work has focussed on crowding, which is a puzzling phenomenon where objects placed in peripheral vision become harder to identify when they’re placed near other objects.

As well as my work on the interface of philosophy and science, I have also done a lot of work on the metaphysics of properties. Objects in the world have certain properties (for example, a ball may have properties such as redness and sphericity), but how should we best understand these properties? How do they participate in causal interactions? What would properties have to be like to explain the success of science?

Other activities

My website is: https://henrytaylorphilosophy.wordpress.com/

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Mansouri, M & Taylor, H 2024, 'A culture of their own? Culture in robot-robot interaction', AI & Society, pp. 1-17.

Vickers, P, Adamo, L, Alfano, M, Clark, C, Cresto, E, Cui, H, Dang, H, Dellsen, F, Dupin, N, Gradowski, L, Graf, S, Guevara, A, Hallap, M, Hamilton, J, Hardey, M, Helm, P, Landrum, A, Levy, N, Machery, E, Mills, S, Muller, S, Sheppard, J, N.K., S, Slater, M, Stegenga, J, Strandin, H, Stuart, M, Sweet, D, Tasdan, U, Taylor, H, Towler, O, Tulodziecki, D, Tworek, H, Wallbank, R, Wiltsche, H & Finnigan, S 2024, 'Development of a novel methodology for ascertaining scientific opinion and extent of agreement', PLOS One.

Taylor, H 2024, 'Powerful Qualities and the Metaphysics of Properties', Philosophy Compass, vol. 19, no. 9-10, e70000. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.70000

Taylor, H 2023, 'Attention as a patchwork concept', European Journal for Philosophy of Science, vol. 13, no. 3, 36 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-023-00538-5

Taylor, H 2023, 'Compound powerful qualities: Properties as compounds of distinct powers and qualities', Synthese, vol. 202, no. 4, 118. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04339-4

Mansouri, M & Taylor, H 2023, 'Does cultural robotics need culture? conceptual fragmentation and the problems of merging culture with robot design', International Journal of Social Robotics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01085-y

Taylor, H 2022, 'Consciousness as a natural kind and the methodological puzzle of consciousness', Mind & Language. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12413

Taylor, H 2021, 'A new solution to the regress of pure powers', Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anab039

Taylor, H & Sayim, B 2020, 'Redundancy masking and the identity crowding debate', Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 257-265. https://doi.org/10.1002/tht3.469

Taylor, J 2020, 'The relation between subjects and their conscious experiences', Philosophical Studies, vol. 177, pp. 3493-3507. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01379-w

Taylor, J 2019, 'Fuzziness in the mind: can perception be unconscious?', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12592

Sayim, B & Taylor, J 2019, 'Letters lost: capturing appearance in crowded peripheral vision reveals a new kind of masking', Psychological Science, vol. 30, no. 7, pp. 1082-1086. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619847166

Expertise

I specialise in the overlap between cognitive science and philosophy, in particular:

The philosophy of psychology (especially perceptual psychology)
The nature of consciousness
Perception, especially as it relates to consciousness.
Attention.
Colour
The metaphysics of properties

Articles by Henry

Below is a selection of Henry's popular media articles and appearances. He has published in The Conversation.

Visual illusion that may help explain consciousness: new study. The Conversation. (December 2020) This is about a new visual illusion that may help us understand peripheral vision.

Blindsight: a strange neurological condition that could help explain consciousness. The Conversation. (July 2020) This is about blindsight and the problem of consciousness. This article is available in Arabic here.

What is a species? The most important concept in all of biology is a complete mystery. The Conversation. (July 2019) This is about the species problem in biology.

Interviews

Discussed contemporary metaphysics and the influence of Aristotle’s metaphysics on Islamic Philosophy on The Voice of Islam (January 2021).

Discussed the role of emotions in our moral judgements on The Voice of Islam. Listen to the recording is available (starts at 1 hour, 7 minutes)(October 2020).

Expertise

Brain damage, senses and vision impairment
Nature of attention (paying attention to something)