Lying is prima facie morally wrong. But most people are willing to acknowledge that it is sometimes OK to lie.
Cognitive Daily has an interesting post concerning a study designed to assess when teenagers think it’s OK to lie. You might be amazed at what teenagers regard as permissible defeating circumstances. Here is the link to the article.
Why should philosopher professors be interested in this? First, the data is interesting. Second, it may come in handy if you ever talk about lying as a case of wrongness in intro or ethics. Third, it may tell us some interesting things about student/teacher relationships. Fourth, it should motivate us to be careful about how we argue with students when we argue that plagiarism is wrong.
Plagiarism
When most students are told about the evils of plagiarism, it’s usually cashed out in terms of lying. We often do give students other reasons, but I bet that these other reasons don’t always sink in. If the student has an overly permissive attitude as to when it’s OK to lie – they will not be terribly moved by plagiarism-is-lying-arguments for the wrongness of plagiarism.
I’ve always suspected that this was true, which is why I like to stress other reasons for thinking that plagiarism is wrong. These reasons have little to do with lying, and I think these are more compelling reasons for why plagiarism is wrong.
One of the primary reasons I give for thinking that plagiarism is wrong is that it harms (or risks harm) to the other students. Word travels fast – particularly in the local area about how easy it is to get through the local college with a degree. The more plagiarism that happens, the more it devalues other student’s degrees.
I like to give my students the following analogy. Imagine all of your classmates bought a $20,000 plot of land and you poured salt all over it. Plagiarism is like doing that. It pours salt over a degree and makes it worthless in the eyes of some potential employers.
So, an interesting result of the study is that perhaps it should move us to emphasize the wrongness of plagiarism that does not merely reduce the wrongness of plagiarism to the wrongness of lying.
(Aside: The other reason I like to emphasize the Harm-To-Other-Students argument over other reasons is it gives non-plagiarizing students a very reason to be angry about plagiarism at their school.)
This is an interesting post, but I am a bit suprised to see that you think that the usual explanation for the wrongness of plagiarism reduces to that of lying. I mean we do call it academic dishonesty so I guess I can see why you think that but I have never thought of it that way. The reason why it is strange to think of it that way is because you do not ask each and every student if the work is their own nor do they report to you that the work is there own so they don’t seemed to have lied in the technical sense of the word: they have not said something believed to be false with the intent to decieve, the people in the study imagined.
I have always thought of the wrongness of plagairism in analogy to the wrongness of promise breaking instead of lying. The students, by enrolling in the course, undertake an obligation to do their own work; they in effect gaurantee that the work turned in will be theirs and theirs alone. When you plagiarize you violate that oath/contract. Or put another way; the university expressly forbids plagiarism and when you enroll in the university you agree to obeys its rules and therefore agree not to plagiarize. But none of this has to do with lying or the wuestion about when lying is permissible. Plagiarims is not like lying on one’s resume, it is an altogether different kind of moral violation.
Of course this is not to deny the adverse effects that you point out as well (cheapening of the degree, etc). Those are indeed compelling reasons not to plagiarize, but they inevitably induce the ‘but if I don’t get caught that won’t happen’ response.
Hi Richard,
Fair enough. I think I have an overly permissive view of what it take to testify that P.
For example, I think people can testify that P without literally asserting P. They can pragmatically implicate P. If I ask someone if it’s raining outside, and they say there’s an umbrella in the corner – then they have pragmatically implied that it is raining outside.
People can also testify, without uttering words. If I ask if it’s raining, and someone simply nods – that seems like testimony.
So, if you think think there is a prior agreement by enrolling in the university to submit only work that is your own – then the act of submitting a paper could be construed as a kind of communicative act of testimony that this is my own work.
In any case, the point can be made without actually calling it lying – it’s an act of deception (whether it’s lying hinges on whether or not there was a communicative act that this is there own work) – but persons with overly permissive views about when it’s OK to lie would have an overly permissive view about when it’s OK to deceive – which plagiarism clearly is. The deception involved be it lying, or promise breaking is still the main kind of reason we tend to give.
So…it seems that we still ought to emphasize potential harms.
That’s a good point regarding the “but if I don’t get caught response”
Two Potential Responses
First: The degree can be cheapened even if they don’t get caught. If stories get around about how easy it is to cheat and not get caught, that cheapens the degree. So if the cheating is known about in the student body – it can cheapen the degree.
Second: At least some students are persuaded that risking harm to others (whether actual harm happens) is seriously morally wrong. One might try that avenue.
Thanks for the comments.
Yes I agree that plagiarism is a kind of fraud (of which lying and false promising are species). I also agree with you remarks about speech acts. So maybe it can be construed as lying and promise breaking (and come to think of it, theft. But I don’t really think that the theft issue plays a large role in explaining why plagiarism is wrong at the undergraduate level). But the point was that emphasizing the promise braking aspect would negate the worry that you pointed to about lax views about permissible deception.
RE 1st possible response: Right, that’s why the ideal free rider situation is one where they pretend to endorse the norm while violating it. So the ideal plagiarizer who doesn’t get caught and doesn’t let other people know that they plagiarized…what’s wrong with that? This is the general problem with lilnking the wrongness of promise breaking to personal gain (as Hobbes’ Senible Knave demonstrates).
RE 2nd PR: I have doubts about possible harms having anything to do with things being wrong or not…but I guess I can see a possible case where possible harms might come into play (like where you use someone as bait to vatch a serial killer without their knowing it). But I would bet that every such case is wrong for some other reason besides the possible harm (like violation of autonomy)…
I think Parfit’s got some examples of this. But here are some I’ve been kicking around.
Suppose Bob operates a trash compactor at a garbage dump, and has very excellent reasons to believe that there is a child in the trash compactor. There is no child, but Bob justifiably believes that there is a child in there. Suppose Bob presses the button to compact the trash. This seems wrong even though no one was actually harmed.
Suppose a child is actually in the trash compactor, but the trash compactor malfunctions. Here the child was not actually harmed, but it seems that what Bob did is wrong.
One explanation for the wrongness is that risking unnecessary harm is wrong.
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