We do love when our own internal thought processes get confirmed by others. Aside from the shared joy of discovery, it tends to validate other related ideas which haven't been put into words yet. So I'm happy to see this idea coming from someone with Russell's reputation. I had made the observation a few years back that science looks at things from the outside-in and really never gets to the "why" of what things are, never seeing from the inside-out, so to say. It does a really good job of the "how" and it does understand causal whys, but the deeper whys remain shrouded. Imagine my delight in finding this quote today, where Russell is identified with a similar idea:
The Russellian monist solution, inspired by certain writings of Bertrand Russell from the 1920s, is to point out that physical science is in fact silent on the intrinsic nature of matter, restricting itself to telling us what matter does.
via Are electrons conscious? | OUPblog.
Hah, just finished the paragraph, and it talks about causality the same as I had identified, we're definitely on the same page.
The rest of the article seems pretty cool too:
The idea is that it is only by supposing that there is consciousness “all the way down” to electrons and quarks that we can render the emergence of human and animal consciousness intelligible. Experience can’t possibly emerge from the utterly non-experiential... so it must be there all along.