 This regress has traditionally been regarded as vicious (see, e.g., Bergmann 1960), although philosophers such as Russell (1903: §55) and Armstrong (1997: 18–19) have argued that it is not. In doing so, however, they seem to take for granted the fact that \(a\) has the property \(F\) (pretty much as in the brute fact approach; see below) and go on to see \(a\)’s and \(F\)’s instantiating \(I_1\) as a further fact that is merely entailed by the former, which in turn entails \(a\)’s, \(F\)’s and \(I_1\)’s instantiating \(I_2\), and so on. This way of looking at the matter tends to be regarded as a standard response to the regress. But those who see the regress as vicious assume that the various exemplification relations are introduced in an effort to explain the very existence of the fact that \(a\) has the property \(F\). Hence, from their explanatory standpoint, taking the fact in question as an unquestioned ground for a chain of entailments is beside the point (cf. Loux 1998: 31–36; Vallicella 2002).