Moral Responsibility and Habits

[Pod]

I was listening to Podcast 2254 and in it the caller is confessing to physically abusing his siblings from when he was (I think) eight to early 19.  The caller is able to see his lack of total responsibility when he was a younger teen, but when he mentions that he still inflicted this abuse when he was 18, Stefan mentions that it was already a habit by then. 

When he says this it feels like he's absolving the caller of some responsibility for his actions.  This may be the case and this may be true, but I can't pinpoint the reason why habitual abuse holds the abuser less responsible than just abuse in general.  My gut tells me that since his environment was so severe, he had no external indicators that what he was doing was wrong, and that knowledge of alternatives (arguments against what he was doing) were not easily accessible, his only line of defense which would be that shred of empathy that his parents were beating out of him was all that stood between him and abuse, and naturally that fell.  Now abuse to him would become commonplace. He'd get used to it, his mind would be warped by it, and as he aged it would become a part of life. 

I think the key here is when you start abusing.  If he would have started when he was 18, he would not have been desensitized to the violence as he was.  With more maturity he certainly would have had a harder time starting considering it wasn't something he'd become accustomed to.  It would be like bringing this alien into his life he'd never seen before.

Another thing to consider is that right when he found FDR he stopped.  UPB was that alternative that helped him see his abuse. It shined a flashlight on this thing that nobody had ever shined light on before. 

What does everyone here think about this?  Moral responsibility isn't always a black and white ordeal as we know, but is it shifted by habitual abuse that started when the mind was much less mature that alternatives weren't available for? 

[Eudaimonic]

For me, it would be interesting to ask whether all abuse is habitual abuse, it wouldn't make sense to me that you would just suddenly start abusing people in your late teens or adulthood without it being habituated in your mind at some point prior.

At the same time, it's not like the knowledge that abusing people is wrong wasn't around this person, at the very least it's all over media, I don't think many people claim to support openly abusing people. It would also seem likely to me that he would have several emotional signals that were telling him that the abuse was wrong, then again where would he get the knowledge to understand those emotions from?

I think it's reasonable to say that the older a person gets the more moral responsibility he has and while you couldn't well blame him for the abuse from 9 to say 15 from 16 to 18 I think you could reasonably say, considering the culture he's grown up in, that he knew what he was doing was wrong and even if it was a habit, he had the ability to change. Perhaps I'm wrong though, just my thoughts, let me know I what you think!

 

[Pod]

@Eudaimonic

It's true that he probably had those feelings that what he was doing was wrong primarily due to the fact that he had indicators of harm being done via his siblings being bruised/crying/pleading for him to stop.  I think aside from those indicators there wasn't much that would have indicated the morality of his situation.  He lives in the United Arab Emirates so I'm not sure Dr. Phil would be playing in any coffee shops.  When you're surrounded by a lack of knowledge, I don't know if just gut feelings are enough to warrant full moral responsibility.  Also consider that societies everywhere thrive on people who've been beaten out of trusting their gut. 

[Eudaimonic]

On 5/2/2017 at 1:40 PM, Pod said:

@Eudaimonic

It's true that he probably had those feelings that what he was doing was wrong primarily due to the fact that he had indicators of harm being done via his siblings being bruised/crying/pleading for him to stop.  I think aside from those indicators there wasn't much that would have indicated the morality of his situation.  He lives in the United Arab Emirates so I'm not sure Dr. Phil would be playing in any coffee shops.  When you're surrounded by a lack of knowledge, I don't know if just gut feelings are enough to warrant full moral responsibility.  Also consider that societies everywhere thrive on people who've been beaten out of trusting their gut. 

I think we also might consider that, even if he does live in United Emirates States, that there is most likely either a culture or a religion which would tell you that abusing your siblings is wrong, but perhaps I'm just ignorant of that region.

As well, by the time he was 16 or so, he would have the capacity to abstract and universalize his actions, if he's smart enough to comprehend this show I have to guess he's smart enough to do the pretty basic moral calculation that abusing someone so innocent is wrong.

To be perfectly frank however, I haven't listen to the video and don't know the whole context, I'm only working with the base facts provided by you, so I apologise for my ignorance on that part but don't feel particularly inclined to watch it.

The concepts are certainly interesting to me though.