I wasn't being reductionist. The point was that at that stage the genotype-phenotype distinction is absent. And since you yourself indicated that you consider the RNA world to contain life, I do not think that you can reasonably criticise me for following your lead.
There has been an interesting new development. The creation of a working protocell which could almost be plausible in a prebiotic environment. The main problem seems to be that it needs citrate, which isn't plausible, but now that we know citrate solves some important problems we can start the search for alternatives.