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Pla­gia­rism by col­lege stu­dents has got­ten some atten­tion in the New York Times lately, and it occurs to me that I have dropped the ball on a series of posts about pla­gia­rism that I started ear­lier this sum­mer. Although I had planned to write other stuff next, I’m instead going to allow myself to be side­tracked by Stan­ley Fish’s Opin­ion­a­tor post, “Pla­gia­rism is Not a Big Moral Deal,” which I found perplexing.

Fish makes two main claims:

1. Pla­gia­rism is a learned sin
2. Pla­gia­rism is not a philo­soph­i­cal issue (more specif­i­cally, I think he means it’s not a moral issue)

Regard­ing point 1, Fish writes:

The con­cept of pla­gia­rism, how­ever,  is learned in more spe­cial­ized con­texts of prac­tice entered into only by a  few; it’s hard to get from the notion that you shouldn’t appro­pri­ate your neighbor’s car to the notion that you should not repeat his words with­out cit­ing him. The rule that you not use words that were first uttered or writ­ten by another with­out due attri­bu­tion is less like the rule against steal­ing, which is at least cul­tur­ally uni­ver­sal, than it is like  the rules of golf.

Regard­ing point 2:

Now if pla­gia­rism is an idea that makes sense only in the precincts of cer­tain spe­cial­ized prac­tices and is not a nor­ma­tive philo­soph­i­cal notion, inquiries into its philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings  are of no prac­ti­cal inter­est or import… Every­day dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tices do not rest on a foun­da­tion of phi­los­o­phy or the­ory; they rest on a foun­da­tion of them­selves;  no the­ory or phi­los­o­phy can either prop them up or top­ple them. As long as the prac­tice is ongo­ing and flour­ish­ing its con­ven­tions will com­mand respect and alle­giance and flout­ing them will have neg­a­tive consequences.

It seems to me that point 1 doesn’t have any impor­tant impli­ca­tions for under­stand­ing pla­gia­rism. While Fish admits that, in some sense, every sin is learned, he implies that what’s inter­est­ing in the pla­gia­rism case is that rules regard­ing attri­bu­tion of work to oth­ers are not “cul­tur­ally uni­ver­sal.” That is, while some rules are shared across all cul­tures (for exam­ple, rules against gra­tu­itous harms to oth­ers, pre­sum­ably), other rules, like those against pla­gia­rism, are not. Rather, pla­gia­rism rules belong to spe­cific sub-cultures (jour­nal­ism, phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence), and not to others.

Fair enough. But Fish seems to take the non-universality of pla­gia­rism rules as evi­dence that they are not a moral mat­ter. However, a rule’s not being shared across cul­tures is insuf­fi­cient to show that it is not a moral rule, and must instead be one of pro­fes­sional eti­quette (or what­ever else). A rule’s non-universality is in fact per­fectly con­sis­tent with a vari­ety of moral the­o­ries, even besides cul­tural rel­a­tivism. That’s because many moral philoso­phers hold that moral­ity is sen­si­tive to cir­cum­stances. An act that is per­mis­si­ble for a cul­ture liv­ing in a very harsh envi­ron­ment might not be per­mis­si­ble for a cul­ture liv­ing in a more favor­able envi­ron­ment, for instance.

Pla­gia­rism rules can be under­stood as a response to the cir­cum­stances of peo­ple work­ing in par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sions. They seem to be a moral response, and not merely one of eti­quette or pru­dence, because pla­gia­rism rules are about lim­it­ing harms and facil­i­tat­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion amongst com­mu­nity mem­bers. Are these not the hall­marks of other moral rules, such as those against shoot­ing your neigh­bors and steal­ing their stuff?

So, notice that point 2 doesn’t fol­low from point 1, and seems false besides. Pla­gia­rism rules do not “rest on a foun­da­tion of them­selves,” as per­haps do silly eti­quette mat­ters such as using one’s forks in a par­tic­u­lar order so as to sig­nal classi­ness to one’s din­ing com­pan­ions. Rather, pla­gia­rism rules orig­i­nate from, and are jus­ti­fied by, the cir­cum­stances of cer­tain pro­fes­sion­als that make pla­gia­rism poten­tially harm­ful to indi­vid­u­als and dele­te­ri­ous to com­mu­ni­ties of inquiry. As moral prac­tices, they are indeed a proper sub­ject of philo­soph­i­cal scrutiny. If the pla­gia­rism rules adopted by pro­fes­sional com­mu­ni­ties were some­how unfair in prin­ci­ple or in their effects, then philoso­phers might indict them on moral grounds.

What then of col­lege stu­dents who pla­gia­rize? It’s true that they are not full-fledged mem­bers of the ingroup to which pla­gia­rism rules apply. Yet, even pla­gia­rism by stu­dents has sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial to harm indi­vid­u­als and dam­age com­mu­ni­ties. So, pla­gia­rism by stu­dents is wrong for the same types of rea­sons as pla­gia­rism by pro­fes­sion­als is wrong — although not nec­es­sar­ily to the same extent, because the stakes in the for­mer case are lower. However, as in many other moral cases, stu­dents’ lack of knowl­edge of the wrong­ness of pla­gia­rism, their fail­ure to under­stand what con­sti­tutes it, and/or their lack of intent to com­mit it may go some ways towards mit­i­gat­ing their blameworthiness.