 As background for the ontological accounts to come, we start with a number of considerations commonly taken to provide prima facie support for taking determinables to exist, and to moreover be ontologically irreducible (again: not identical to any construction of) to determinates. We then consider some preliminary motivations for deflationary (anti-realist or reductive) treatments of determinables. One might wonder whether the motivations for taking determinables to exist might be presented independently of the motivations for taking determinables to be irreducible; but this proves difficult, for there simply isn’t enough daylight between the initial motivations for existence and for irreducibility to prise them apart. The presentation thus reflects that the motivations for reducibility (or for anti-realism) come later, as pushing against taking the prima facie appearances of irreducible determinables at face value.