My name is Henry Schiller.


I’m a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Sheffield.
h.i.schiller (at) sheffield (dot) ac (dot) uk 
Curriculum Vitae



About me


My work explores how creatures like us can use linguistic tools to shape and change one another's minds. My current research can be divided into four questions:

  • How is social influence possible, and is linguistic manipulation rational?
  • What even is the difference between rational learning and arational influence?
  • How are rational / normative projects enabled by arational cognitive mechanisms?
  • What must we learn about our own minds in order to act (together)?

These projects put my work is at the intersection of philosophy of language, social philosophy, cognitive science, and moral psychology.

I completed my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Josh Dever and Mark Sainsbury. In May of 2022 I took up a 3-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Sheffield; my Leverhulme project is about the nature and acquisition of comparative attitudes. Outside of philosophy, I have been involved in various music projects in New York City and Austin, Texas.



Published Writing


︎Default Domain Restriction Possibilities w/ Katherine Ritchie - Semantics & Pragmatics (forthcoming)
︎Directing Thought - Ergo (forthcoming)
︎Genericity and Inductive Inference - Philosophy of Science (2023)
︎What’s your opinion? Negation and ‘Weak’ Attitude Verbs - Phil. Quarterly (2023)
︎Meaning and Responsibility w/ Ray Buchanan - Mind & Language (2023)
︎Pragmatic Particularism w/ Ray Buchanan - PPR (2022)
︎A Hole in the Box and a Pain in the Mouth w/ Laurenz Casser - Phil. Quarterly (2021)
︎This Paper Might Change Your Mind w/ Josh Dever - Noûs (2021)
︎Illocutionary Harm - Philosophical Studies (2021)
︎Acts of Desire - Inquiry (2021)
︎Is that a threat? - Erkenntnis (2021)
︎Phenomenal Dispositions - Synthese (2020)
︎Acquaintance and First-Person Attitude Reports - Analysis (2019)
︎The Nyaya Argument for Disjunctivism - History of Philosophy Quarterly (2019)
︎The Swapping Constraint - Minds & Machines (2018)



Current Research


Some of the papers I’m currently working on. I’ve organized them into different projects corresponding to my research questions, but there’s a lot of crossover.

Language and social influence:
︎A paper about how imperatives motivate w/ Shaun Nichols
︎A paper about what we learn from imperatives (revise and resubmit)
︎A paper about conditional speech acts w/ Daniel Drucker
︎A critical notice of The Politics of Language by David Beaver & Jason Stanley

Learning and arational influence:
︎A paper about rational learning and discourse
︎A paper about what it is to ‘possess’ information
︎A paper about ‘hoarding’ information w/ Jake Quilty-Dunn
︎A paper about rational learning and Jeffrey conditionalization w/ Josh Dever

Representing our minds (to others):
︎A paper about rational learning and desire satisfaction
︎A paper about the social function of ‘wants’
︎A paper about imagination, skill, and desire formation
︎Two papers about relief w/ Casey O’Callaghan
︎A paper about norms of attention in relationships w/ Margherita Harris

Innateness and normative projects:
︎A paper about domain restriction and rule learning w/ Shaun Nichols
︎A paper about intentions and resource rationality w/ Dan Harris














































‘Linguistic communication’