Do you believe that human conscience and consciousness ultimately came from mindlessness?
‘Do you believe that human conscience and consciousness ultimately came from mindlessness?’
firstly, consciousness is the state of being conscious, which means aware of surroundings and reacting to them, which just about all life does, so I have no idea why you bring that up...as for conscience, it denotes the ability to discern rightness from wrongness, which would of course concern only those beings with a strong socio-cultural understanding, i.e. humans with their hyper developed brains...why did the human brain grow so large, while the chimp brain remained stuck in the distant past? that’s the real question; a logical answer would be a change in diet, from abundant but nutritionally deficient leaves and grass, to less ubiquitous but more nutritious fruits and nuts, and ultimately, other animals, all of which required larger and more cooperative social units, or tribes, if you will, and of course fueled the growth of cranial activity, enabling abstract thought to become a reality...
your usage of the term mindlessness is also odd, in this context; just because abstract thought is beyond the capacity of most life forms does not confer mindlessness upon those forms...