I’ll make one crucial point here — you’re conflating science and philosophy.

Science does not tell you ANYTHING about idealism or realism. It only gives us information related to measurable aspects of our conscious experience. It cannot tell us ANYTHING about what is really “there” when we’re not looking at the moon or listening to a tree falling in the forest.

When you say you think “the moon is really there” when you’re not looking — think carefully about what you mean by “moon.”

Can you see that if you mean, “The moon-image my brain constructs is still there when my brain is not constructing the moon-image” can you see how absurd this is?

The question science CANNOT answer is, “What IS it that is THERE that STIMULATES my brain to construct the moon-image?” That our modern science cannot tell you.

Paul Brunton wrote a book over 500 pages long, “The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga,” which is almost entirely a series of reflections on just the above. I spent 3 months in 1994 going through it — i was totally confused about it at first, but when I “got” it — my whole understanding of science, and of the nature of our experience, was radically transformed.”

So when you say you’re a realist, what do you think you’re being realistic about? What is it that is there when your brain-constructed (or more correctly, mind-constructed”) moon-image is gone?

FOr that matter, what is there when the tree falls and you take away BOTH your mind constructed sound — AND the scientists’ mind constructed concept of sound waves — what is left?

That is X, and no scientist practicing under the limitations of modern day science has even a clue — and they do NOT know if it is conscious or not, alive or not, intelligent or not.

Yogis, mystics, contemplatives and sages DO know, but that knowledge is not currently considered valid in science as currently understood.