 Statements like (1)–(4) at least purport to express explanations on their surface: “because” is a common explanatory idiom, and any of a number of others could have been used instead (e.g., “in virtue of”, “accounts for”, “is the reason why”, “makes it the case that”, or simply “explains”). Moreover, statements like (1)–(4) are metaphysical at least in the sense that they are commonly put forward and assessed in metaphysics, and proceed by citing distinctions of importance to metaphysics in some illuminating way. These include distinctions of  property-instance,  determinable-determinate,  essence-accident,  and  analysans-analysandum that appear to be at play in the examples above; others might include  part-whole  (e.g., “The vase is fragile because of its crystalline microstructure”) and  member-set  (e.g., “The set {Socrates} exists because Socrates exists”), among potentially others still. 