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.

解释性优先的概念得到澄清。A 在 B 之前被解释是为了正确说明 B 的个体化提到 A，但反之则不然。探索实体之间的解释优先级关系并不涉及解释个体条件为何如此的不可能的事业。意义和内容的使用理论说明与《形而上学至上》的主张一致如果它们本质上涉及引用关系；否则不会。在考虑抽象对象的情况下，我们必须区分定义表达和个体化实体的事业。当我们这样做时，弗雷格对支持“个性化先于代表”原则的项目的抱怨就烟消云散了。《形而上学的首要地位》中对精神状态主体的处理并没有让约翰斯顿有问题的“人格”，真正主体的适当时间段，一旦我们区分：随着时间的多样性和给定时间的多样性；在个体化的形而上学条件和仅仅是“概念联系”之间；事物存在的条件与事物的性质之间。