 In recent years, something close to the de-ontologization strategy—or rather a bundle of more or less similar strategies—became prominent, known under the heading “fictionalism”. The basic idea of fictionalism is, roughly put, that utterances belonging to a certain region of discourse are not to be taken literally, that speakers producing such utterances have a fictional attitude towards them and are engaged in a sort of pretense or make-believe. (For an overview of the diverse versions of fictionalism as well as a succinct presentation of its most important pros and cons see the entry on  fictionalism.)