 Fictionalism, on the other hand, is the view that (a) our mathematical sentences and theories do purport to be about abstract mathematical objects, as platonism suggests, but (b) there are no such things as abstract objects, and so (c) our mathematical theories are not true. Thus, the idea is that sentences like ‘3 is prime’ are false, or untrue, for the same reason that, say, ‘The tooth fairy is generous’ is false or untrue—because just as there is no such person as the tooth fairy, so too there is no such thing as the number 3. It is important to note, however, that despite the name, fictionalist views do not have to involve any very strong claims about the analogy between mathematics and fiction. For instance, there is no claim here that mathematical discourse is a kind of fictional discourse. Thus, fictionalists are not committed to the thesis that there are no important disanalogies between mathematics and fiction. (We will return to this issue below, in section 2.4.) Finally, it should also be noted at the start that fictionalism is a version of mathematical nominalism, the view that there are no such things as mathematical objects.