 There is also the second, more philosophical, reason. Any account of abilities owes us, among other things, an account of ability-ascriptions. This is perhaps true of philosophical topics generally, but it is true of ability in particular. Even philosophers who are explicit in their ‘refusal to take language as a starting point in the analysis of thought and modality’ (Lewis 1986, xi) are prone to make explicit appeal to language when the topic turns to ability, as occurs in (Lewis 1976) or (Taylor 1960). This is for any number of reasons, but perhaps especially because it is difficult to even identify the topic under consideration without using or mentioning certain phrases, notably ‘can’ and ‘is able to.’