If it were my conscience then I would be aware of it. These situations were ones of total alarm (just short of fright) where someone else was trying very hard to kill me but he failed. They cause nightmares afterwards. Really realistic ones where you wake up sweating.

As I said there are some things I agree with Trump about and some I do not. It is a mixed bag. It always is. In an election you must always choose the lesser of two weevils.

All of them.

My own subconscious mind gives me nightmares about horrifying things that have happened to me.

So there is no doubt to me that the subconscious exists.

Depending on the horror, the nightmares linger or else go away eventually. Some take longer than others.

This is not conscious on my part. If it were I would make then go away immediately. It is subconscious.

Emotion is the basis for ethics.

And seals like other mammals are just like us humans.

They perceive their environment, consider it, and react to it.

Their brains have gray matter just like ours do.

If there is such a thing as "the mind" then this begs the question Who or What created it?

The First Cause?

This is all a big can of worms.

You are then forced to follow Aquinas down that rabbit hole.

Just for the record, math is a game that we play, with definitions and rules.

Math does not really exist outside of the human mind. It is simply an analytical tool that humans use to do things in an organized manner, such as count buffalo by prehistoric hunters.

@brianw you are speaking for yourself.

The concept of God comes to us from Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibnitz, and is also mentioned by our modern contemporary Roger Scruton who lives in England.

You have skipped all these august philosophers in jumping to your own conclusions.

Plus, what if God knocked on your front door and introduced himself to you? What then? Then all your assumptions about God would fly out the window.

You are affirming the consequent with your own assumptions by arguing from simple ignorance. Bad philosophy.

You do not know God. That much is readily apparent. It may be the end to YOUR OWN argument. But do not presume to speak for anyone else.

A good atheist would mention all the terrible things that have happened in history and blame God. This is what Bertrand Russell did.

A good deist would simply point out that after creating us, God has simply left us on our own. Scruton has said that God is too busy to bother with us. I tend to agree with Scruton. Not with you.

President Donald John Trump is certainly no philosopher.

He is more like a tyrant, if you want to compare him with ancient Athenians.

He talks like a tyrant, acts like a tyrant, and gives speeches like a tyrant. At times he even reminds me of newsreels about Adolf.

At any rate that's from a philosophical viewpoint.

While I do agree with him on some things that are problems in the USA currently, such as job migration to Asia, and border insecurity, and high taxes on corporations, I do not agree with him on other issues such as more tax cuts for the rich, challenging N. Korea with inflammatory rhetoric, and separating illegal immigrants from their children.

Since the ACA repeal bill did not ever get to his desk we do not know whether he would have approved or vetoed it. ACA repeal was stillborn from the GOP. The late Senator John S. McCain the 3rd aborted it. In response, the American people in this past November 2018 election voted the GOP out of power in the U.S. House Of Reps. So that issue is a party issue not a Trump issue. And the GOP has now paid for it.

As a POTUS Mr. Trump seems to be using the bully pulpit like a tyrant. Sometimes he gets his way and other times he does not. Still he seems more like a tyrant than like a Pericles or a Socrates.

And … ??

It sounds like you have the start of something very fresh and new.

I do not believe animals could change themselves however. I suspect they were changed by the environment.

When I was a kid in elementary school we learned about cosmic rays morphing our DNA by slicing it randomly. Ergo the animal is changed by the environment starting with the cosmic rays and then the environment naturally selects for those changed animals that are superior to unchanged ones so far.

You have started with microbes, which is very difficult from a philosophical point because they do not have brains. Higher animals such as worms and fish and amphibians and reptiles and ultimately mammals have brains however. With brains they can at least react to their environments.

So microbes is a dead end in your own new and fresh philosophy. Try again but with something smarter.

Aristotle started with humans. I think you are probably going to have to do the same. More specifically Aristotle started with Athenians. You may want to pick a more primitive group like the Corded Ware Culture of Northern Europe -- more primitive than the Greeks -- since you are trying to get back to the human basics. All evidence tells us that the Greeks moved into Greece from the north in prehistory.