Ethics

If a person hasn't been taught right from wrong, good from bad, acceptable from unacceptable behavior, how responsible are they for their actions when they realize their "mistake"?

Comments

It's a common claim in morality and in the law that one can't be held responsible for wrongdoing unless one was able to know that the conduct in question was wrong and was able to regulate one's actions in accordance with this knowledge. This makes a certain kind of normative competence a condition of responsibility. So the question becomes whether not having been taught right from wrong precludes the requisite kind of normative competence. That depends on both the nature of one's upbringing and the sort of moral knowledge required. I doubt one could demonstrate moral incompetence simply because one had not been explicitly taught not to violate the rule one broke. Presumably, one should be able to infer some moral rules (e.g. don't cheat investors) from other ones (e.g. don't cheat). And parents aren't the only source of moral education; friends, teachers, employers, public figures, and the law are also important sources of moral instruction. So the fact that Mom and Dad didn't teach Junior the difference between right and wrong on some particular issue doesn't mean that no one did. Also, some moral truths are arguably more obvious than others. It's probably easier to see the wrongness of cold-blooded murder than it is to see the wrongness of insider trading. So ignorance of some moral rules might be easier to maintain or harder to overcome than that of others. It's another matter if one's upbringing not only failed to provide certain moral information but actually made it impossible or difficult to absorb certain moral rules. Perhaps certain kinds of parental abuse make it more difficult to be empathetic. Of course, that's a psychological, rather than a philosophical, question. But if it were true, it might mean that people who had been subject to certain kinds of abuse by their parents might lack empathy, which is arguably a capacity that is necessary either to recognize when others are harmed or wronged or to be appropriately moved by this recognition. But then such abuse might tend to compromise normative competence as well.

So it's hard to answer your question in the abstract without more details about the wrongdoing involved and the wrongdoer's upbringing. On the one hand, it's certainly conceivable that one's upbringing could have been so deficient or abusive as to preclude the sort of normative competence required for responsibility. On the other hand, there are many sources of moral education, and many sorts of moral facts are not especially recondite, so that wrongdoers don't automatically get off the hook just because their parents weren't moral exemplars. Moreover, normative competence comes in degrees, with the result that we would probably recognize degrees of responsibility and not always insist that wrongdoers be fully responsible or fully excused. If so, having a weak moral education at home might reduce one's responsibility for some kinds of wrongdoing, even if it did not provide a complete excuse.

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