I think what gives you this idea in the double slit experiment is that depending on how you observe or measure the object, it seems to exhibit different behavior. How is this possible? Isn’t it mysterious? To resolve this mystery, you appeal to an explanation like awareness. But although it feels like an explanation, it actually explains nothing. Putting a word on something is reassuring, but behind the word we’re not sure what we’re talking about—we don’t know how it’s supposed to function; there is no actual explanation. It purports to explain everything, thus explains nothing. You don’t know how it works and can’t make any predictions. It’s just as mysterious as the initial mystery itself (just like explanations implying gods or other supernatural causes).
Sometimes mystery must remain. But in this case, that needn’t be so. The initial mystery may not be such a mystery after all. An observation or measurement implies an interaction with the measured/observed object. The double slit experiment involves a protocol that interacts with the observed object and constrains its behavior, thus producing different outputs when you slightly change the protocol and the interaction. The same applies to all measurement/observation—it is never absolutely neutral. So if the rock behaves slightly differently when you’re around observing it, this is fundamentally no different from the reason why the rock moves if you push it. It doesn’t imply that the rock is aware of anything, unless by “awareness” you simply mean “physical interaction.”
I think what gives you this idea in the double slit experiment is that depending on how you observe or measure the object, it seems to exhibit different behavior. How is this possible? Isn’t it mysterious? To resolve this mystery, you appeal to an explanation like awareness. But although it feels like an explanation, it actually explains nothing. Putting a word on something is reassuring, but behind the word we’re not sure what we’re talking about—we don’t know how it’s supposed to function; there is no actual explanation. It purports to explain everything, thus explains nothing. You don’t know how it works and can’t make any predictions. It’s just as mysterious as the initial mystery itself (just like explanations implying gods or other supernatural causes).
Sometimes mystery must remain. But in this case, that needn’t be so. The initial mystery may not be such a mystery after all. An observation or measurement implies an interaction with the measured/observed object. The double slit experiment involves a protocol that interacts with the observed object and constrains its behavior, thus producing different outputs when you slightly change the protocol and the interaction. The same applies to all measurement/observation—it is never absolutely neutral. So if the rock behaves slightly differently when you’re around observing it, this is fundamentally no different from the reason why the rock moves if you push it. It doesn’t imply that the rock is aware of anything, unless by “awareness” you simply mean “physical interaction.”