Abstract

Fictionalism is supposed to be motivated, at least in part, by its ability to undermine our ordinary grounds for believing in numbers and other contested entities. Eklund argues that a weaker and less controversial view, which he calls indifferentism, can do the job just as effectively. I will show that whether he’s right about this depends upon how we think about “our ordinary grounds”. If we think about our ordinary grounds as consisting in what people are pre-theoretically inclined to say or believe, then he is exactly right. But if we think about our ordinary grounds as consisting in how things seem, then (contra Eklund) fictionalism does outperform indifferentism.