I'm a fan of panpsychism, which holds that consciousness, or at least some sort of AWARENESS is present in the material world down to the smallest level.
In brief, the reason for this is that I believe, intuitively, logically and by personal experience, that consciousness is not something that emerges from the physical world as a by-product - but is something intrinsic to it.
Philosopher David Chalmers (an advocate of panpsychism) has assembled an enormous and extreemly comprehensive list of online papers on the problems of consciousness here:
Online papers on consciousness which I would highly recommend. Be warned you may end up reading for days
