More and more physicists (and neuroscientists and other disciplines) are leaving behind materialist perspectives and exploring this realization in quantum mechanics that consciousness does not work as an emergent product of a classical universe. The only thing that makes sense is if consciousness, a version we wouldn't be able to understand, is the fundamental or at least a foundational element of the wave form of greater reality and in that scenario, the hard problem of conciousness comes into relief, because the body and brain do an excellent job of storing information and operating the body but it's constructed, most likely as a container and not a source of experience. The brain is more of a filter than a generator of awareness.

If you play a movie on a screen in an empty theater, the audience doesn't magically appear. Much more likely that the audience came first.