 In  §3,  we raised a surprising tension in theorizing about metaphysical explanation: at least initially, it appears at once to be about the world (qua metaphysical) and about how we think and communicate about the world (qua explanation). Realists and antirealists about metaphysical explanation disagree about how to resolve this tension. For realists, metaphysical explanation is primarily (or even entirely) objective and mind-independent. That is, there is some mind-independent fact of the matter about what metaphysically explains what; what metaphysically explains what depends on what the world is like, and not (or at least not primarily) on how we think or talk about it. Those who deny this, and think of metaphysical explanation as inescapably linked to how we think and communicate, are antirealists.