The Criterion of Structural Fundamentality and Its Application to David Chalmers' Philosophy of Mind.

Abstract

This paper proposes a criterion of structural fundamentality for philosophical terms and applies it to the central concepts of David Chalmers’ philosophy of mind. A term is considered fundamental if it cannot be derived from previously defined concepts and is necessary for the construction of further structure. Four operational tests follow from this criterion: the necessity test, the independence test, the localization test, and the generative test. The criterion is first demonstrated on physical primitives — mass, charge, spacetime — which pass all four tests. It is then applied to Chalmers’ key terms: experience, phenomenal consciousness, and qualia. The analysis shows that Chalmers accepts the fundamentality of experience after the failure of reductive explanation without formulating a verification procedure. The impossibility of reductive derivation does not entail ontological fundamentality. After applying the criterion, all three terms admit coherent structural decomposition through previously defined concepts drawn from a minimal seven-definition system (Kablukov 2026a–d). The zombie argument is shown to rely on a contradiction internal to its own conditions. The hard problem of consciousness is not dissolved but relocated: from the question of why phenomenal experience exists to the question of under what conditions being gives rise to consciousness as the capacity to perceive one’s own reflection. This is a structurally different question at a different level of the system.