Reality and consciousness may emerge from each other

Panpsychism is the belief that Mind is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world.

Panpsychism resolves a dilemma within realism: Mind is itself elemental or else Mind arises from non-mental elements.

If you opt for the latter, you must explain how Mind arises.

If you opt for the former, you have to explain why there is no evidence of mentality in the elemental. Why can we not see evidence of the inner life of the atom?

For this and other reasons, the panpsychist position cannot be held consistently. Rather we have to turn to mind as neither pervading the cosmos nor emerging from it but instead giving reality itself meaning and thereby allowing us to talk about existence.

Irish philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley (1685–1753) famously asked, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The question is self-contradictory. Assuming trees are not conscious of themselves (which may not be true), objects like trees and sounds are ideas in the mind. If there are no people (or thinking beings) to perceive those ideas, then we cannot talk about their existence. Rather, a statement of a thing’s existence is about the idea of a thing consciously perceived and not some deeper hidden reality.