[lit-ideas] Re: Conscious after the fact?

Irene wrote
Just curious, how do you or anyone respond to the fact that a human being makes a decision regarding his position vis-a-vis his world, i.e., whether it's a trustworthy place or not, which is to say, whether he feels secure or insecure, by the time he's nine months old? If the child's cries, etc. aren't met timely and he decides the world is not a trustworthy place, basically he's been rendered 'insecure', which is to say, he's been damaged for the rest of his life.
I take it that this is an empirical claim? I have, myself, no particular response to it, except that you might be amused by the wildly contradictory (but fashionable) theories of child raising described in Mary McCarthy's novel, The Group.
I suspect, though, that it's a concept above the scope of philosophical musings. One has to wonder what the excuse is for everybody else in the world.
If I understand this at all, you seem to be saying that this concept (?) is one that isn't the subject matter of 'philosophical musings,' and that that is my excuse for something or other. You seem also to be under the misapprehension that, as an academic philosopher, I think in some constrained way. This is like supposing that a particle physicist must have a professional view on the best translation of 'akrasia.' 

Robert Paul





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