Hi Sam

Glad you like the proposition that physicalism is micro-behaviorism. I have found in the past that some physicalists tend to wax a bit indignant at the suggestion. Perhaps they do not like the idea that their approach bears some resemblance to Skinner et al (which I can undertand!).

As to your comments on 'physical', I certainly would not want to adopt a position which, even by implication, denied consciousness.  What I would want to deny, though, is that the idea of consciousness is as easy to define as some of the discussion I see - especially in analytical philosophy - seems to assume. For example, the widespread tendency to discuss human consciousness merely in terms of perceptual faculties, such as sight etc, seems to me simplistic in the extreme. Human consciousness, in my view, is inseparable from what we call hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, a sense of the passing of time etc. Thoughts and emotions, if you like. Discussing it in terms such as "do I see the colour red?" etc is just tinkering with the problem in my view.

I would agree with your comment that "any 'seeming' and sensing that there is ...cannot go on outside of it" (I have my doubts about the bit I omitted in your comment).   But that, in my view, is one of the reasons why the idea is so elusive: we are trying to define something by making use of that very something to do so. I would on the other hand have severe doubts about Russell's view that "consciousness is the aspect of the physical world that we know best". I am not at all sure that consciousness is an "aspect of the physical world" and I am very sure that, personally speaking, it is one of the aspects of my experience that I know (in the sense of understand) the least. 

DA  

PS I shall certainly have a look at your Phenomenal Qualities Project.