Time For That Discussion About Plagiarism Again

Several of my students' recent assignments at one place I'm teaching this term involved plagiarism.  That is a perennial problem in academia, occurring at every level (from K-12 to doctoral work, and sometimes beyond) and in pretty much every type and tier of institution.  Some places I've taught have a very strict policy about it, requiring instructors to report any suspected instance of plagiarism to some type of academic integrity board or office.  Others give instructors a bit more of their discretion.  But all of them make it very clear to students in their codes of conduct that plagiarism is a violation of academic integrity.

Of course, students - again, my experience is that students at elite institutions are no better than those in lower-tier institutions - typically don't read those student codes, unless they're required to.  And they often forget them or ignore them, even if they did read them.  They are still held responsible for what is contained in those codes - ignorance doesn't provide an adequate or reasonable excuse - but often don't know two key things.  They are frequently hazy about what precisely constitutes plagiarism.  And they are woefully ignorant about the potential seriousness of plagiarism as an offense.

I'm not a big disciplinarian myself, and although I do call plagiarism out when I see it, my sanctions for the offenders tend towards the less punitive end.  When I'm teaching at a place where I don't have to report it up the chain, unless its egregious, I handle it less formally.  The student gets a zero on their assignment - which gets their attention - and in the feedback, I inform them that they've been caught plagiarizing, and that they need to reread the syllabus.  There's no revise and resubmit for plagiarized assignments.  I usually give them the website that at least some of their plagiarized material comes from - it's not too difficult to find, in most cases.

When I was a younger professor, I used to look at plagiarism in a strongly moralistic terms - as theft, fraud, lying, or the like - a violation of moral and institutional norms.  Now not so much.  I do think it's wrong, and I let the students know that.  But it's also kind of a dumb move on their part, or more technically speaking, an example and instance of foolishness (the opposite of prudence), a failure of their own unfinished, in-development practical rationality.

So these days I treat cases of plagiarism in two ways.  There's always that inward groan of disappointment, at a student whose corner-cutting really is a shortsighted move.  But then I treat it as an opportunity for teaching and learning.  Sometimes the student or students aren't up for that - theres a whole array of defensive reactions I could write another piece about! - but when approached in the right ways, many students are able to have decent conversations about the matter, and then get themselves back on the track they slipped out of.

So today, we spent about 25 minutes of our class session discussing plagiarism, going through the topic point by point.  I did a good bit of providing information and drawing connections between matters, but they also got a chance to give their own views and perspectives, and to ask some smart, challenging questions.  I think for next semester, I need to build some of this in to our early class sessions. Perhaps I should also develop some short video resources that will be useful not only for  my own students but other viewers as well.

Stoicism, Kindness, and Small Gestures

Earlier this week, one of our dogs made the day - if only for a brief moment - of a young man who seemed quite down.  Amica is friendly with strangers by temperament, particularly so when she has a ball in her mouth, so when she saw a young man in an X-man t-shirt approaching sadly from the apartment building across the street, she greeted him as soon as he was close.  Tail wagging, she went right for him, and shoved her ball into his leg.  He reached out tentatively to pet her - she's a big, muscular, energetic dog - and when I said "she's showing off her ball to you," his face brightened, he smiled, petted her briefly, and strode off visibly changed in his body language.

That brought home to me important but often overlooked aspect of Stoic moral theory.  When you read the classic authors - Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius - you'll see a good bit of advice that one ought to display attitudes of kindness, friendliness, and cheerfulness towards others.  Is this merely about being "nice," observing social conventions, getting along and fitting in?   For classical Stoicism, the answer is No.  When genuine or authentic, such attitudes, feelings, and actions actually comprise an integral part of virtue or moral goodness.

I was particularly reminded of a discussion by an earlier writer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was not himself a member of the Stoic school, but who admired and appreciated many of their doctrines.  His book, On Duties, presents Stoic moral theory systematically and in great detail.  In his discussion of the virtues - morally good states of character a person ought to develop and act in accordance with - he sets alongside justice a disposition we can call "kindness,"  "benevolence," or "charity" (he uses the terms benevolentia and beneficientia, "willing good" and "doing good" to another).  What my dog did, without giving it a thought, and in an admittedly small way, reflects what the Stoics think we ought to do - how we ought to act - with our fellow human beings.

Aristotle, Anger, and Akrasia

A man gets angry at lunch with several colleagues or coworkers -- a response to a perceived insult or put-down -- and before realizing it, launches into a profanity-laden diatribe.  He regrets it soon afterwards, since he crossed a line, though he didn't realize it at the time.  A couple arguing with each other find themselves unwilling to listen to the partner each of them does actually still love (though respect?  perhaps not), giving in to the temptation to construe the other person's claims in as bad a light as possible, taking digs and cheap shots -- the argument escalates into a full-blown fight, not what either of them really wanted, but what, on some level they both chose.  These are just two examples.  Just by mining one's own memories, or attentively watching other people, one could multiply these sort of cases indefinitely.  They represent a phenomenon which in moral theory we often call by its Greek term, akrasia.

Last November, I delivered a talk at Felician College specifically on akrasia -- commonly translated into English as "weakness of will," "incontinence," or "lack of self-control" -- specifically about the interconnections between akrasia and anger as Aristotle explores them in his texts -- the most important discussions appearing in his Nicomachean Ethics, but illuminating passages also popping up here and there in the Eudemian Ethics, the De Anima, and a few other texts.  For a number of years, I've been nursing, nurturing, and indulging an interest in Aristotle's views on anger, working towards eventually publishing a book on the topic (currently about 1/4 written, though such snapshot figures of progress tend to change, ironically always towards diminution, as the study progresses).  Aristotle's treatment of akrasia's connection with anger is sufficiently interesting to merit its own chapter.  But why?

Streamlining Life, Thinking, and Writing

If you're a long-term reader of this blog -- or of my other main philosophy blog, Virtue Ethics Digest -- you may have noticed a relative paucity of posts over the last year or so, a lower degree of productivity (or at least prolixity) than previously.  If you're a new reader to this blog, of course, you need only look to the sidebar post archive list, where you can see the numbers.  In either case, you might wonder why that has been the case, and whether or not this is the "new normal," as they say.

You might also have noticed a rather startling change to the look and even feel and function of the blog.  It started out as something like a playground or preserve for philosophical musings and rants, and for about two years I've done more or less what I liked with aesthetics, content,  even eventually scheduling.  Really a decision -- or at least a dissatisfaction -- coming down the pike for a long time, matters finally came to a head this Thanksgiving break, as I reflected on what else I've wanted to do with Orexis Dianoētikē, what I wanted to make of it.  I wanted something considerably more disciplined, focused, well-integrated with my other projects and purposes . . .  streamlined, you might say.  That's reflective of a broader resolve, one extending to (and through) numerous aspects of my own life, incorporating Orexis Dianoētikē within that larger reorientation.

Self-Promotion: How Much is Too Much? (part 2 of 3)

Several weeks ago, in an earlier piece, I brought Aristotle to bear on a question which arose in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece, The Art and Science of Academic Self-Promotion. There are some real issues there -- not just matters of etiquette or prudential career moves, but genuine moral issues, comprising matters wider in scope than just the decidedly not (for anyone who has actually worked there) ivory-clean towers of academia.  We inhabit a society in which we routinely have to compete for recognition within the organizations to which we contribute, often in ways that can easily be overlooked. Oftentimes, promotions, raises, even the possibility of small perks depend on how much value we bring -- or rather, are perceived to add -- to the projects, concerns, functions of the institutions.

In addition to the demands imposed by the kind of workplaces we typically inhabit for large portions of our days, weeks, years, even lives -- a situation differing radically  not only from Aristotle's own time but even from workplaces just a few generations ago -- there's also a factor that runs as a constant across societies and cultures, down the paths of time and into any foreseeable future, since it stems from human nature -- the natural human tendency to want to talk about, to publicize in some way, our accomplishments, our qualities, our successes -- or at least what we perceive or would like ourselves or others to think of as such -- precisely why the first Aristotelian set of ideas germane to this topic, discussed in the previous post, were the virtue of truthfulness about self, and its opposed vices of boastfulness and self-deprecation.  Is there any further light Aristotle can shed on the subject, though?  Any other discussions of interest, any virtues or vices particularly relevant here?

Summer and Winter Foolishness

Years ago in reading, I encountered the distinction between two families of fools -- and two types of foolishness.  I've invoked that easily remembered and vivid distinction by way of explanation in many conversations down the years, and have puzzled about precisely what goes wrong with the winter fool -- how to explain their folly in terms of defective practical reasoning, what specific defects or failures are involved, what concepts and what moral theories best illuminate this all-too-common but somewhat complex mode of misreasoning.

Why would this distinction -- originating in a Jewish proverb, then trickling through Russian folklore, eventually popping up and popularized in Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls -- continue to draw the interest of a moral theorist?  Well, for one because folly is the classical opposite to wisdom. It is practical wisdom, what the Greeks called phronesis, what the biblical Wisdom literature (which bears similarities to, draws upon, and reworks other similarly sapiential literature not only names but personifies, what the Latin west in its turn termed at some times prudentia, at others sapientia.  It's not enough to know what comprises and constitutes wisdom, though -- and that's tough-enough knowledge to acquire and retain, a never-ending arduous task in actuality -- one also needs to know what the various pitfalls, temptations, and forms of foolishness are, not least to recognize and avoid them, but also to understand them -- for by understanding how one goes wrong, one better grasps how one, choosing differently, goes right.

Best Practices Not Always Best: Real Goods, Ideal Bests, and 3 Potential Problems

Harvard Business Review, whose enticing, bite-sized articles I get referred to through my Twitter feed, published a post yesterday which my recent experience compelled me to read:  Why Best Practices Are Hard To Practice.  Lately, I have been struck by how often we invoke that jargon  of "best practices" in higher education, particularly at conferences, during workshops, and in education theory literature.

We also throw about other similarly popular buzz-words:  Take "high-impact practices." As part of an FSU team detailed to study and gather information on these last Spring, I traveled to the Association of American Colleges and Universities conference on Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices (HIPs)  It was eye-opening, to say the least, for a philosopher who, focused on scholarship and teaching within my discipline admittedly devoted little attention  to scholarship of teaching and learning until immersing myself in it at FSU.

As it turned out, many of the educational strategies we were already doing some work with fell into that category of HIPs.  We involve our first year students in Learning Communities.  We have brought in guest speakers to provide workshops on Inquiry-Guided Learning and the closely related Problem-Based Learning. We have invested heavily in CLA in the Classroom.  Through Title III, we've established excellent programs in Writing Across the Curriculum, Reading Across the Curriculum, and the Chesnutt Library Fellowships which focus on Information Literacy. Once Service Learning became a priority, our Center For Community Justice took on three new words and a new role, becoming the CCJSL.  We have a Chancellor's Reading Club, which has all of the incoming Freshmen read and discuss a common book.  A program was even established linking faculty mentors with budding student scholars, the objects of which were to produce a work of undergraduate-level scholarship and to introduce the student to how real scholarship is done in the field.  With the exception of RAC, I've been involved in every one of these, with notably mixed successes and failures, whose narratives I'll defer to later posts.