I think you'd have a hard time finding a scientist in the field that doesn't think that the mind is the result of the brain's action, but in origin of life research, "self-replicating molecules" is not the only game in town.

The two main approaches are "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first", though the replicators seem to do better in the popular press. I did my doctoral work in this field, and I was in the metabolism camp along with many of the major scientists working on the problem.

In a nutshell, "metabolism-first" means that a network of many interacting molecules were changing their local environment, eventually creating various feedback cycles that amplified the effect. Meaningful replication (especially of the RNA/DNA "informational polymer" variety) likely came significantly later, and almost certainly after the metabolic system had already achieved a basic state of homeostasis.

It was likely an evolutionary advancement of the "metabolic system" to use molecules like RNA (if not RNA itself, initially) to establish a more robust homeostasis by encoding information about the system in a more stable form.