Existential grounding is the thesis that all existential generalizations are grounded in their particular instances. This paper argues that existential grounding is false. This is because it is inconsistent with two plausible claims about existence: (1) the claim that singular existence facts are generalizations and (2) the claim that no object can be involved in a fact that grounds that same object’s existence. Not only are these claims intuitively plausible, but there are also strong arguments in favour of each of them.

We take it that we can exercise doxastic agency by reasoning and by making judgments. We take it, that is, that we can actively make up our minds by reasoning and judging. On what I call the ‘Standard View’ this is so because judgment can yield belief. It is typical to take it that judgments yield beliefs by causing them. But on the resultant understanding of the Standard View, I argue, it is unclear how judgment could play its role in doxastic agency in the way we take it to. I therefore offer an alternative understanding of how judgment yields belief. Drawing on Ryle (2009) I argue that when one comes to believe by judging the event which is one’s judging is token identical to the event which is one’s coming to believe. This paves the way for version of the Standard View capable of explaining how we can actively make up our minds despite that we cannot believe or come to believe at will.

In cases of identity crowding, a subject consciously sees items in a figure, even though they are presented too closely together for her to shift attention to each item. Block (2012, 2013) uses such cases to challenge the view that attention is necessary for consciousness. I argue that in identity crowding cases, subjects really do attend to the items. Specifically, they attend to the figure as a global object that contains the individual items as parts. To support this view, I provide evidence that attention can be directed to a global object (as when we attend to the gist of a scene) or a local object (as when we focus in on some element of that scene). My response helps to defend the view that attention is necessary for conscious perception.

In recent years, a number of authors have defended the coherence and philosophical utility of the notion of metaphysical indeterminacy. Concurrently, the idea that reality can be stratified into more or less fundamental ‘levels’ has gained significant traction in the literature. Here, I examine the relationship between these two notions. Specifically, I consider the question of what metaphysical (in)determinacy at one level of reality tells us about the possibility of metaphysical (in)determinacy at other more or less fundamental levels. Towards this end, I propose a novel conception of the way in which fundamental states of affairs determine derivative states of affairs in the presence of indeterminacy and construct a corresponding formal model of multilevel systems that demonstrates the compatibility of determinacy at the fundamental level with indeterminacy at higher levels (and vice versa), thereby rebutting Barnes’ (2014) suggestion that indeterminacy at any level of reality implies indeterminacy at the fundamental level.

The perhaps most important criticism of the nontransitive approach to semantic paradoxes is that it cannot truthfully express exactly which metarules preserve validity. I argue that this criticism overlooks that the admissibility of metarules cannot be expressed in any logic that allows us to formulate validity-Curry sentences and that is formulated in a classical metalanguage. Hence, the criticism applies to all approaches that do their metatheory in classical logic. If we do the metatheory of nontransitive logics in a nontransitive logic, however, there is no reason to think that the argument behind the criticism goes through. In general, asking a logic to express its own admissible metarules may not be a good idea.

The knowledge norm of assertion is the subject of a lively debate on when someone is in a position to assert something. However, not much has been said about the logic that underlies such debate. In this paper, I propose a formalisation of the knowledge norm in a deontic logic that aims to be explanatory and conceptually sound. Afterwards, I investigate some problems that this formalisation makes visible. This reveals some significant limitations of the underlying logic: it can neither contain Axiom 4 (transitivity) nor Axiom C4 (density). Moreover, sentences of the form p and I have not asserted that p appear to licence a violation of deontic rules.

I investigate syntactic notions of theoretical equivalence between logical theories and a recent objection thereto. I show that this recent criticism of syntactic accounts, as extensionally inadequate, is unwarranted by developing an account which is plausibly extensionally adequate and more philosophically motivated. This is important for recent anti-exceptionalist treatments of logic since syntactic accounts require less theoretical baggage than semantic accounts.

Snedegar (2013a) offers a contrastivist solution to the puzzle about negative reason existentials (initially presented in Schroeder 2007), which he argues is preferable to Schroeder’s own pragmatic solution. The proposed solution however raises a difficulty for contrastivism, as it suggests an alternative according to which the relevant contrast classes are determined not by the semantics of reason ascriptions but rather by pragmatic effects of (intonational) contrastive stress. Nevertheless, I suggest there is a contrastivist-friendly solution to the puzzle. In what follows, I explain the problemfor Snedegar’s account, and I offer an alternative solution to the problemof negative reason existentials. I argue that the solution is well-motivated by a feature of Snedegar’s own account, and that it is also compatible with Schroeder’s pragmatic account.