Fictionalism
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Fictionalism is a doctrine in philosophy that suggests that statements of a certain sort should not be taken to be literally true, but merely a useful fiction. Two important strands of fictionalism are modal fictionalism (which states that facts about what might have been the case or what must necessarily be the case are merely fictions) and mathematical fictionalism, which states that talk of numbers and other mathematical objects is nothing more than a convenience for doing science.
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