 The third strategy, primitivism, seeks to avoid the difficulties that threaten positionalism and anti-positionalism by taking the radical step of asking us to reconfigure our explanatory settings. It’s a familiar thought that we cannot account for the fact that one thing bears a relation \(R\) to another by appealing to a further relation \(R'\) relating \(R\) to them—that way Bradley’s regress beckons. To avoid the regress we must recognise that a relation is not related to the things it relates, however language may mislead us to think otherwise. We simply have to accept as primitive, in the sense that it cannot be further explained, the fact that one thing bears a relation to another. But, according to primitivism, it is not only the fact that one thing bears a (non-symmetric) relation \(R\) to another that needs to be recognised as ultimate and irreducible. How \(R\) applies, whether the \(a\Rel b\) way or the \(b\Rel a\) way, needs to be taken as primitive too (MacBride 2014: 14–15). The difficulties encountered by attempts to provide an analysis of differential application provide corroborative evidence for primitivism. Does refraining from providing an analysis of differential application constitute shirking an obligatory task for systematic philosophy? Hardly. Remember what Lewis correctly said about predication: “Not every account is an analysis” (Lewis 1983: 352). What we need, according to this third strategy, is a form of realism committed to the existence of relations but which denies that the manner of their application, their differential application, can be further explained.