 Balaguer’s easy-road response begins by granting premise (i) of the Quine-Putnam argument—i.e., by granting (for the sake of argument) that there do exist indispensable applications of mathematics to empirical science. Balaguer’s strategy is simply to account for these applications from a fictionalist point of view. His argument can be summarized as follows: If there are any such things as abstract objects, then they are causally inert. But given this, it follows that the truth of empirical science depends upon two sets of facts that hold or don’t hold independently of one another. One of these sets of facts is purely platonistic and mathematical, and the other is purely physical (or more precisely, purely anti-platonistic). Since these two sets of facts hold or don’t hold independently of one another, fictionalists can maintain that (a) there does obtain a set of purely physical facts of the sort required here, i.e., the sort needed to make empirical science true, but (b) there doesn’t obtain a set of purely platonistic facts of the sort required for the truth of empirical science (because there are no such things as abstract objects). Therefore, fictionalism is consistent with an essentially realistic view of empirical science, because fictionalists can maintain that even if there are no such things as mathematical objects and, hence, our empirical theories aren’t strictly true, these theories still paint an essentially accurate picture of the physical world, because the physical world is just the way it needs to be for empirical science to be true. In other words, fictionalists can maintain that the physical world “holds up its end of the empirical-science bargain”. Finally, to provide a view of what mathematics is doing in empirical science, the claim is that it functions as a descriptive or representational aid. In other words, it gives us an easy way of making claims about the physical world. For instance, by making reference to real numbers—or, better, by using terms that purport to refer to real numbers—we give ourselves an easy way of describing the temperature states of physical systems. And Balaguer argues that mathematics can succeed in its role as a descriptive aid even if it isn’t true; indeed, he argues that truth is simply no help at all in this connection.