Abstract

The notion of explanatory priority is clarified. For A to be explanatory prior to B is for the correct account of the individuation of B to mention A, but not conversely. Exploring the relations of explanatory priority between entities does not involve the impossible enterprise of explaining why individuating conditions are as they are. Use-theoretic accounts of meaning and content are consistent with the claims of The Primacy of Metaphysics if they essentially involve a reference relation; and otherwise not. In the case of thought about abstract objects, we must distinguish between the enterprise of defining an expression and individuating an entity. When we do so, Fregean complaints about the project endorsing the principle “Individuation Precedes Representation” evaporate. The treatment of subjects of mental states in The Primacy of Metaphysics does not let in Johnston’s problematic ‘personites’, proper temporal segments of genuine subjects, once we distinguish: between multiplicity over time and multiplicity at a given time; between metaphysical conditions of individuation and merely ‘conceptual connections’; between the conditions under which something comes into existence, and the nature of that thing.