The P-Word > Stanley Fish And I Agree? > Plagiarism Is Not A Big Moral Deal

Colleagues/

New York Times columnist, Stanley Fish,  " ... a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago," recently published his most recent NY Times Opininator column titled >

Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal

[snip]

Whenever it comes up plagiarism is a hot button topic and essays about it tend to be philosophically and morally inflated. But there are really only two points to make. (1) Plagiarism is a learned sin. (2) Plagiarism is not a philosophical issue.

[snip]

Plagiarism is like that; it’s an insider’s obsession. If you’re a professional journalist, or an academic historian, or a philosopher, or a social scientist or a scientist, the game you play for a living is underwritten by the assumed value of originality and failure properly to credit the work of others is a big and obvious no-no. But if you’re a musician or a novelist, the boundary lines are less clear (although there certainly are some)  ... .

[snip]

And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself.

It follows that students who never quite get the concept right are by and large not committing a crime; they are just failing to become acclimated to the conventions of the little insular world they have, often through no choice of their own, wandered into. It’s no big moral deal; which doesn’t mean, I hasten to add, that plagiarism shouldn’t be punished — if you’re in our house, you’ve got to play by our rules — just that what you’re punishing is a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe.
[more]

[http://nyti.ms/cAa1WF]

See Also >The P-Word II > The Ontology of Plagiarism: Part Two > Get A Clue

[http://bit.ly/aI2mmE]
As Some May Know I Have A Different View On The P-Word >

NYTimes > Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

[http://bit.ly/bEYvK7]

/Gerry