ABSTRACT
A Reductionist holds that the existence of a person is really nothing more than just the existence of certain other kinds of things. It might be claimed, for instance, that a corporation cannot be reduced to the persons who are its members and the physical objects that are its property, since a corporation can continue to exist through the replacement of all its original members and property by new members and property. The successful reduction of the theory of the covalent bond to quantum mechanics shows the former to be in principle dispensable, but showing this is not the same thing as giving a positive reason for eliminating the first theory. Distinguishing between reductionism and eliminativism requires introduction of the semantic dimension. But this complicates matters significantly, for success at replacing the terms of one theory with those of another is something that admits of degrees.
