About
I’m interested in the mind and its place in the natural world. Understanding the mind doesn’t only involve thinking about human minds. Animals have minds too, and so might machines. I’m interested in understanding similarities and differences between human and nonhuman minds, using tools from philosophy, cognitive science and AI.
My current project focusses on episodic memory – memory for events from our past. I’m interested in what episodic memory does for us, and whether it’s uniquely human. My UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project, ‘Episodic Memory: Uniquely Human?’ investigates both of these questions by looking at episodic memory in humans, animals and artificial agents.
I’ve also written about self-recognition, self-awareness and mindreading in animals, and methodological issues in animal cognition research. I also have research interests in the philosophy of biology, especially questions about how to count organisms in tricky cases like pregnancy and conjoined twinning.
Relevant Publications
- Boyle, A. (Forthcoming). Disagreement and classification in comparative cognitive science. Nous. DOI: 10.1111/nous.12480
- Boyle, A. 2022. ‘The mnemonic functions of episodic memory.’ Philosophical Psychology. 35 (3), 327-349. DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2021.1980520
- Boyle, A. 2020. ‘The impure phenomenology of episodic memory.’ Mind & Language. 35, 641-660. DOI: 10.1111/mila.12261