Can you say more about how you got that second bullet item?
It’s not clear to me that being committed to the idea that mental states can be reduced to smaller components (which is one of the options the OP presented) commits one to stop talking about mental states, or to stop using them in explanations.
I mean, any economist would agree that dollars are not ontologically fundamental, but no economist would conclude thereby that we can’t talk about dollars.
This may owe to a confusion on my part. I understood from the title of the post and some of its parts (incl the last par.) that the OP was advocating elimination over reduction (ie, contrasting these two options and picking elimination). I agree that if reduction is an option, then it’s still ok to use them in explanation, as per your dollar example.
Can you say more about how you got that second bullet item?
It’s not clear to me that being committed to the idea that mental states can be reduced to smaller components (which is one of the options the OP presented) commits one to stop talking about mental states, or to stop using them in explanations.
I mean, any economist would agree that dollars are not ontologically fundamental, but no economist would conclude thereby that we can’t talk about dollars.
This may owe to a confusion on my part. I understood from the title of the post and some of its parts (incl the last par.) that the OP was advocating elimination over reduction (ie, contrasting these two options and picking elimination). I agree that if reduction is an option, then it’s still ok to use them in explanation, as per your dollar example.