The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz's Law, the statue is not the lump. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially revise our view of reality. In this paper, I provide a solution to the grounding problem that does not require such a revision. I then show how my solution to the grounding problem can solve a related problem and answer a related question. The upshot is that the solution I offer is not only non-revisionary, but also fruitful.Consider what is now a familiar problem concerning the statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it. Both fail to share all of their kind and modal properties and are therefore, by Leibniz's Law, not identical. They are, however, very much alike.They share all of their proper parts (at least at the microphysical level) and have the same shape, weight, mass, etc. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. 1 Borrowing terms from Karen Bennett's 2004 paper, when it comes to the grounding problem, there are the no-thingers, the one-thingers, and the multi-thingers. The 1 Kit Fine (2003) has developed a number of new Leibniz's Law arguments in favor of thinking that the statue is not the lump that do not rely on the traditional kind and modal differences. Call the kind of differences Fine relies on 'Finean-differences'. In §2.5, I show why my solution to the traditional differences between the statue and the lump is also a solution to these Finean-differences.

Truthmaker says that things, broadly construed, are the ontological grounds of truth and therefore, that things make truths true. Recently, there have been a number of arguments purporting to show that if one embraces Truthmaker, then one ought to embrace Truthmaker Maximalism -the view that all nonanalytic propositions have truthmakers. But then if one embraces Truthmaker, one ought to think that negative existentials have truthmakers. I argue that this is false. I begin by arguing that recent attempts by Ross Cameron and Jonathan Schaffer to provide negative existentials with truthmakers by appealing to the world fail. I then argue that the conditional -if one embraces Truthmaker, the one ought to embrace Truthmaker Maximalism -is false by considering small worlds where very little, if anything at all, exists. The conclusion is that thinking that negative existentials do not have truthmakers, and therefore rejecting Truthmaker Maximalism, need not worry Truthmaker embracers.

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Divine Simplicity has it that God is absolutely simple. God exhibits no metaphysical complexity; he has neither proper parts nor distinct intrinsic properties. Recently, Jeffrey Brower has put forward an account of divine simplicity that has it that God is the truthmaker for all intrinsic essential predications about him. This allows Brower to preserve the intuitive thought that God is not a property but a concrete being. In this paper, I provide two objections to Brower's account that are meant to show that whatever merits this account of divine simplicity has, plausibility is not one of them.Divine simplicity has it that God is absolutely simple. God exhibits no metaphysical complexity; he has neither proper parts nor distinct intrinsic properties. Now modern discussions of divine simplicity have tended to focus exclusively on a version of divine simplicity that makes God identical to a property.1 But, as has been stressed before, saying that God is a property is highly implausible. 2 Jeffrey Brower, a proponent of divine simplicity, agrees when he says the strategy they adopt [the strategy of making God identical to a property] for making sense of simplicity appears not only extreme, but also extremely ad hoc.Indeed, it would seem that any account of simplicity that could render the doctrine coherent without giving up the traditional conception of properties would be preferable to them.