A Russellian Response to the Structural Argument Against Physicalism

According to David Chalmers (2002), 'we have good reason to suppose that consciousness has a fundamental place in nature' (p. 135). This, he thinks is because the world as revealed to us by fundamental physics is entirely structural-it is a world not of things, but of relations-yet relations can only account for more relations, and consciousness is not merely a relation (pp. 120-21). Call this the 'structural argument against physicalism. shall argue that there is a view about the relationship between mind and body, what I call, 'Russellian physicalism' that is consistent with the premises of the structural argument yet does not imply that consciousness is fundamental.