 First, critics such as Stanley (2001) stress that while terms of the form ‘the average F’ superficially seem like singular terms, they do not behave semantically like ordinary singular terms. But if they do not behave semantically like ordinary singular terms there is no call for a fictionalist account explaining why we do not commit ourselves to there being entities such as the average F when assertively uttering sentences of the form “the average F is G” (see also Kennedy and Stanley 2009).