Is consciousness fundamental, like energy and matter?

Annaka Harris seems to agree with Chris Bache:

We already have science that shows our intuitions about consciousness are wrong, but scientists continue to operate as if those intuitions are correct. It’s like continuing to work with the assumption that the Sun revolves around the Earth, even after we’ve discovered otherwise, because it seems that way. We still do our science based on outdated assumptions — ones based on false intuitions that lead us to believe consciousness arises only from complexity. We have no direct evidence that consciousness arises from complexity. We assume it because it seems that way to us, based on what we now understand to be illusions created by the brain.

You have argued that consciousness may be fundamental — what do you mean by that?

I don’t believe the mind creates matter, as it’s often described under idealism. It’s not that consciousness comes first and creates the world. It’s that matter is consciousness at bottom. That’s what it is intrinsically.

Panpsychism, on the other hand, doesn’t go far enough for me. It describes consciousness as a property of matter. But I argue that we will encounter the “hard problem of consciousness” — the question of how and why this subjective experience arises — wherever we place the emergence of consciousness in the physical world. So it makes more sense to place consciousness at the most fundamental level. These terms and frameworks — materialism, idealism — they’re centuries old and don’t map cleanly onto our updated understanding of the world through centuries of scientific learning and discovery.