It is named after F. H. Bradley who discussed the problem in his 1893 book Appearance and Reality.
Again, however, for it to be the case that a and b stand in the relation of respecting, it doesn't suffice that these four items exist.
In Appearance and Reality, Bradley seems to conclude that the regress should lead us to abandon the idea that relations are "independently real".
One way to take this suggestion is as recommending that in the case of a respecting b, we are dealing with a state of affairs that has only two constituents: a and b.
Strawson and Gustav Bergmann, is to deny the proposition that instantiation is a relation.
[1] Michael Della Rocca uses a version of Bradley's regress to argue in favor of strict monism, which denies that relations or distinctions are intelligible.