  French (1999) and French and Ladyman (2003a) maintain that individuals have only a heuristic role. Poincaré similarly argued that “the gross matter which is furnished us by our sensations was but a crutch for our infirmity” (1898, 41). Ladyman and Ross (2007) argue that objects are pragmatic devices used by agents to orient themselves in regions of spacetime, and to construct approximate representations of the world. Anyone who defends eliminativism as in (1) above must similarly offer a non-ad hoc account of the point and value of reference to and generalization over objects in science. For example, cognitive science may show that we are not able to think about certain domains without hypostatising individuals as the bearers of structure. This is as yet mere speculation and a subject for further study.