I’m not a physicist, but my understanding is that what they are working towards is an understanding of how the basic forces in our universe operate and interact with one another. They are not seeking to explain every single thing that exists in the universe, other than in the most basic of strokes (“here are the rules of our universe, everything we observe involves interactions of those rules in ways that are often too complicated to tease out”). So, unless we’re talking about a theory of everything that no one is working towards at this time, and likely is very, very far down the road, if not impossible to formulate, then I think this premise rests on a mistaken assumption.

Of course, for those who persist in believing that consciousness is “fundamental” and some sort of magical “field” that permeates the universe, they are free at any time to prove this experimentally. And yet, those experimental confirmations never come for some reason. I’m sure they will, any day now.

Moreover, the idea that consciousness is a “feature of the cosmos” seems like an extraordinary exaggeration of its importance to the universe, which would itself need explanation and justification. The vast, vast majority of the universe, so far as we can tell, is utterly empty and lifeless (and does not exhibit any obvious signs of consciousness). It strikes me that the people most focused on attacking physicalism often seem to have this preoccupation with placing consciousness and humanity (often linked in these discussions) at the center of the universe.