Academic Integrity
The concept of cheating is central to the concept of
academic integrity. No one doubts that
cheating is incompatible with academic integrity, but it may be more
controversial that everything that is incompatible with academic integrity is
related to cheating, directly or indirectly.
To cheat is to act unfairly; it is dishonest, betrays trust, fails to
show respect, and evades responsibility.
People generally prefer to talk about positive concepts such as
"honesty," "trust," "respect,"
"fairness," and "responsibility," but it is the negative
concepts that are basic. It is far
clearer to say what behavior counts as immoral than to
say what counts as moral behavior; moral behavior is just behavior that is not
immoral. (Of course there is morally
good behavior, but that goes beyond what is required for moral behavior.) Thus
an examination of the concept of cheating should be of some value in clarifying
the concept of academic integrity. It
may even be that an examination of the concept of cheating will enable one to
devise some policies that serve to discourage cheating and hence to promote
academic integrity.
The concept of cheating has been almost completely
neglected by philosophers. The failure
to examine the concept of cheating has led to the view that an analysis of
cheating is unnecessary because cheating, like lying, is simply a subclass of
deception. Alternatively, the view that
an analysis of cheating is unnecessary may be based on the view that cheating
is a special case of breaking one's promise.
Both of these views are plausible.
Cheating does seem to necessarily involve deception, and most cheating
does involve deception. Cheating also
seems very similar to breaking a promise; seems, in fact, to be the breaking of
an implicit promise. In order to show
that these views are wrong, an analysis of the concept of cheating is
necessary.
Cheating
in its basic form takes place only in activities like games, with have a built
in goal, and which people enter voluntarily.
The rules of this activity can be drawn up explicitly, as in most games,
or simply grow out of custom, as in generally agreed-upon practices in buying
and selling. Games are the paradigm
case of what I call public systems. I
use the phrase “public system” to refer to a guide to conduct that has the
following two features: (1) All persons to whom it applies, all those whose
behavior is to be guided and judged by that system, know what behavior the
system prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages, and allows. (2) It is not irrational for any of these
persons to accept being guided and judged by that system. Most public systems, like games, are entered
into voluntarily. It is usually very
difficult to have a system that applies to people even if they chose not to
have it apply to them, be a public system. However, academic activities can be
public systems even if they are not entered into voluntarily.
Although colleges and universities
are entered into voluntarily, and so their academic activities are more clearly
public systems, elementary and high schools try to make their academic
activities as much like a public system as they can. These schools, like
colleges and universities, try to make sure that everyone engaging in academic
activities knows what behavior the system prohibits, requires, discourages,
encourages, and allows, and they also try to make it that it is not irrational
for any of these persons to accept being guided and judged by that system. All schools, at whatever level, try to make
the system that governs their academic activities known to everyone governed by
that system and also try to make that system acceptable to all of them.
The
clearest examples of public systems are games such as baseball or bridge. These games have an inherent goal and a set
of rules that form a system that is understood by all of the players. They all
know what kind of behavior is required, prohibited, discouraged, encouraged,
and allowed by the game, and it is not irrational for all players to use the
goal and the rules of the game to guide their own behavior and to judge the
behavior of other players by them.
Games, like all public systems, apply only to those playing the game. If a person does not want the goal
sufficiently to abide by the rules, she can usually quit. The paradigm cases of cheating occur in such
voluntary activities. However, sometimes there are such strong reasons for
entering into an activity governed by a public system, that
a person stays in that activity even though they do not want to abide by its
rules. Although going to elementary and high schools is not voluntary and going
to college or university is, the reasons for going to college are so strong,
that there is not much difference. But there are sometime strong reasons for
playing a game, especially if one is a professional. Cheating in academic
activities at college is cheating in the paradigm sense of the term.
Cheating, in the paradigm case, involves the violation of
the rules of a voluntary activity in order to gain this built-in goal, but not
merely this. It is a violation which is
not incorporated into the activity, unlike fouling in basketball. Cheating
usually involves violating a rule of the public system that no one is permitted
to violate and remain in the activity governed by that system. At least
initially, cheating includes no explicit penalty except perhaps expulsion from
the activity. This may lead some to regard cheating as breaking an implicit
promise. Since cheating is violating the
rules of an activity in order to obtain the built-in goal or benefit of
participating in that activity, it will usually not be successful if the other
participants in the activity discover that one has cheated, that is, that one
has not followed the agreed upon rules.
This explains why cheating almost always involves deception. People who know that a person has cheated are
generally not going to allow him to benefit by breaking a rule of that
activity.
Although
cheating is closely connected to both breaking a promise and deceiving, it is
distinct from both. Promises are always
made to a particular person or group of persons. This is true even of genuine implicit
promises. An implicit promise is
sometimes characterized by saying “Silence gives consent.” Someone is made an offer and, by not
refusing, implicitly promises to carry out his part of the bargain. A person can cheat, however, never having
come into contact with anyone who can claim that a promise, implicit or explicit,
was made to him. A person using the
internet may never have talked to anyone else who can claim that some promise
was made to him. Cheating depends on a
social institution rather than on personal interaction; cheating necessarily
involves violating the rules of an activity which everyone participating in the
activity would, at least publicly support, and would almost never be openly
violated.
Entering a game may sometimes involve making a promise to
the other players that one will abide by the rules of the game, but usually
this does not happen. Claiming
that there must always be an implicit promise even when there is no
communication between the players, because cheating is the breaking of a
promise, is simply begging the question.
It has no more force than the claim that cheating at solitaire is
breaking a promise to oneself. Although
there are similarities between breaking a promise and cheating, not every case
of cheating is plausibly regarded as a case of breaking a promise.
The
account of cheating provided above also explains why a person who cheats
generally will try to conceal his cheating from others. Most people participating in an activity will
not allow a cheater to gain the built-in goal of that activity when he has not
abided by its rules. However, when all
of the people participating in an activity are employees of one person, this
person can take advantage of his position outside of the activity to cheat
without even bothering to conceal it from the others. The boss who plays golf with his subordinates
may sometimes cheat quite openly. He may
not count missed strokes, or he may remove the ball from the rough without
taking a penalty. Of course, if he
cheats too much, it might be said that he is not really participating in that activity or playing that game. But in a sense, cheating just is “not playing
the game,” and so this is not a serious objection. One need only notice the reactions of the
people being cheated to realize that they do not consider themselves to be playing
a different game. This analysis also
explains why cheating at solitaire is possible even though one plays that game
by oneself, and so it is not a moral matter.
This same kind of non-deceptive cheating can occur in
more important matters than games. If
there is a shortage of some item, for example, meat, then the butcher may
openly put his thumb on the scale, knowing that no customer will complain about
his cheating because they do not want to jeopardize their chances of getting
meat. In general, those with sufficient power
can cheat without deception. Why
cheating normally involves deception is that few people, or companies, or
countries, are that powerful.
Cheating,
thus, is not reducible to either the breaking of a promise or deceiving, though
all three of them might be classified as a violation of trust or faith. However, this would be to use “violation of
faith” in a technical sense and so is not helpful in understanding what counts
as cheating. Although cheating may seem
different from the other kinds of immoral actions such as deceiving and
breaking promises, it is like them in all the relevant respects. Like deceiving and breaking a promise,
cheating may even be justified.
Justified cheating may seem to be a contradiction, but although examples
of justified cheating may be rare, they are certainly possible. Playing cards with someone who will kill
one’s family if he wins certainly justifies cheating. (If he will kill them if he loses, letting
him win is not cheating.)
Cheating
does have one characteristic that neither breaking a promise not deceiving
have. One cannot break this rule
unintentionally. There seems to be no
such thing as unintentional cheating. Simply forgetting about a promise counts as breaking it
unintentionally. Although it is
not clear what, if anything “unintentional deception” normally refers to, a
natural referent can be found without too much difficulty. Some actions not intended to deceive would
naturally count as unintentional deception, for example, telling jokes to naive
people who will be misled by them or passing on false rumors that one has no
good reason to believe true. Such
actions would naturally count as unintentional deception.
It
is much more difficult to find a natural referent for “unintentional cheating,”
but a plausible example is the following.
A person playing a card game, breaks a rule unintentionally, discovers
it later, but tells no one about it.
Cheating is failing to abide by the rules of the public system of some
voluntary activity in which one is engaging, but I do not claim that this is
now called unintentional cheating. I am
not even sure that it would actually be called either cheating or
unintentional. Even though there is no
intentional breaking of the rules, there is an intentional concealing of a past
violation, and in some games, e.g., golf, people are required to reveal that
they have broken the rules. Concealing
past violations may not be cheating, but it is closely related to it.
Further, people are expected to take reasonable care that
they do not unintentionally violate the rules of any voluntary activity in
which they are participating. This, of
course, requires that one not enter any activity unless one knows the rules by
which it is governed. The
violation of those rules that would clearly be cheating if intentional
generally goes against the interests of all the other participants in the
activity. The attitude of people
toward someone who enters an activity not knowing the rules is close to moral
condemnation. Expulsion is not unjustified.
So although this kind of unintentional breaking of the rules is not cheating,
an analysis of cheating makes clear why such behavior should be avoided. As a practical matter, this means that
engaging in some group activity, including the internet,
one should make some effort to find out what rules if any, there are governing
one’s behavior on the net.
It is worthwhile to use a golf tournament as a model for
academic integrity. Golf is a useful
model because, like academic activity, it can be pursued in two distinct
settings. In the first case, you have
the goal of getting the ball in the hole in the smallest number of strokes.
This occurs when you simply play golf for fun, by yourself or with a friend. Playing golf in this way can be like playing
solitaire, or double solitaire. The game
has clear rules and a player is expected to abide by these rules as he seeks to
get the ball in the hole. However, if
you are playing simply for fun, by yourself or with a friend, you may decide
not to abide by the standard rules, and so not count missed balls or not count
moving a ball that has landed in a particularly bad spot. If playing by yourself, there is nothing
really wrong with doing this, although you may be deceiving yourself about how
well you play and even breaking a promise to yourself to keep an honest
score. Nor is there anything morally
wrong with doing this if your friend agrees to this change in rules. However, if you report to someone else that
you shot a 79 on the course, when you did not abide by the standard rules, then
your are deceiving someone else and that is a moral matter, if only a minor
one.
Academic activity
can be like this, you may simply be interested in testing your academic skills,
for example, testing your word power in an issue of the Reader’s Digest, or
seeing how many foreign words you can translate without a dictionary. People can take practice tests in this
way. Some of these activities, like
playing golf for fun, have established rules, and failing to abide by these
rules simply involves giving up the original activity and doing something
different, e.g., deciding if you know the meaning of the word after you see the
answer. Like changing the rules when playing golf simply for fun, by yourself or with a friend, there is nothing seriously wrong
with doing this. You and your friend can
even help each other with the test as long as you do not tell anyone else that
you got 18 out of 20 words correct, or scored 1500 on the SAT when you took
more time than allotted or got help from each other.
Cheating on a practice test or when playing golf by yourself is probably not a good way to prepare for taking a
real test or playing golf in a tournament, but it is not a moral matter in
itself. Morality concerns our interactions
with others, and though there is a sense of integrity in which it applies to a
person even when he is not interacting with anyone else, that is not the sense
of integrity with which I am concerned, nor is it the sense which is involved
in academic integrity. Academic integrity concerns your relationship with
others. It is only in a derivative sense that it applies to behavior that does
not affect others. It is only in this
derivative sense that cheating on a practice test or when playing golf by
oneself shows a lack of integrity.
Playing golf in a tournament is different from playing
golf for fun by yourself or with a friend, just as
taking a test in school is different from taking a practice test. When you enter into a golf tournament, you
not only still have the goal of getting the ball in the hole in the smallest
number of shots, you also have the goal of getting the ball in the hole in a
smaller number of shots than most, if not all, others. Playing in a tournament adds a new element,
competition with the other players.
Similarly, taking a test in school (or writing a paper or doing a
research project) has the same individual goal, doing the best that you can do,
but it also has another goal, doing better than others who are taking the same
test. Competing with others is not the
only, or perhaps not even the primary goal of academic activity. That goal is
to learn new information, or improve your academic skills, but being in a
college or university adds the element of competition.
There is a tendency to downplay the element of
competition in academic life, to talk about academic activity as if it were
simply an attempt to learn new information or improve your academic skills.
This is a mistake. If academic activity
were solely about learning new information or improving your academic skills,
then why should others care if you cheat. Of course, if you cheat in an activity which
prepares you for a role that you will take on after graduation, you will not be
as prepared to fulfill that role. However,
to claim that cheating will make you unqualified to fulfill your role and so
other people will suffer because of that is quite a stretch and does not seem
to even apply to required philosophy courses.
To say this is very close to saying that to cheat is to
really to cheat yourself out of an education.
But this makes cheating a prudential, not a moral matter,
To claim that cheating is wrong because it cheapens the
value of a degree, is also quite a stretch unless a
majority of the students cheat in the majority of their courses. Furthermore, to say this makes it sound like
the cheater is really cheating the college or university. Accepting this view makes it not surprising
that other students do not get upset by a cheating student. Cheating damages the university, not
them. So one student
may actually help another student cheat by copying his answers or his paper or
telling him where he can get a paper from the internet.
No one claims that a golfer who cheats in a golf
tournament is really cheating himself, or cheating the tournament. Everyone knows that the people being cheated
are the other golfers in the tournament.
That does not completely eliminate cheating, or even some golfers
helping their friends to cheat, but it does affect the general attitude towards
cheaters and even toward those who help others to cheat. Cheating in a golf tournament is not
something that anyone brags about. Honest golfers do not think that they should
stand together with cheating golfers against the officials at the tournament
and protect the cheaters from those officials.
In golf, or any other game, no player who cheats,
(violates the rules), thinks of himself as cheating the referees or umpires, he
knows that he is cheating the other players.
Colleges should make clear that the faculty and administration are
functioning as referees or umpires, or tournament officials, allowing each
student to have a fair chance to compete with others. Students should be helped to see that those
who cheat, by plagiarism from the web, or in any other way, are cheating them,
not the school. I hope that this would
have some impact on their attitudes, making cheating seem less acceptable both
to potential cheaters and to those students who are being cheated..
One of the features of a golf tournament is that the
participants in the tournament have some say about the rules which govern the
tournament and which they
are expected to follow. Of
course, golf tournaments are often held annually so that a tradition has
developed concerning the rules, but all of the players know the rules of the
tournament and if they think that some of the rules are not appropriate they
can try to get them changed. The golfers
know that the point of the rules is to make it that those having the greatest
ability or luck on a given day or set of days will win the tournament. Many of them, especially now with Tiger
Woods, know that they will not win the tournament, but they still want to play
the best they can play and finish as high as they can. These two goals are distinct, but they are
related.
Some golfers prefer to play in the more prestigious
tournaments even though they know that they are less likely to win or even to
finish high in the standings, because they think that the increased competition
will benefit their game. Others prefer
to play in tournaments with players of about the same level as themselves. They think that having a decent chance of
winning or of finishing high in the standing gives them a competitive
motivation to play better. Few, if any,
golfers choose to play in tournaments where they know that they are better than
the other players, because winning in this kind of tournament is least likely
to help them play as well as they can.
But no matter what kind of tournament they play in, golfers do not want
any other golfer to cheat, because even though others cheating will not affect
their primary goal of playing as well as they can, someone cheating will affect
their standing in the competition.
My suggestion is that colleges and university initiate
policies that make students realize that they are like golfers in a golf
tournament. They should make clear that
there are two closely related goals, the first is doing as well as you can, and
the second is trying to be as high in the standings as you can. It should be made clear that although
cheating makes it less likely that you will be as well prepared as you could
be, and that it decreases the prestige of the school if people are known to
cheat, the primary reason for not cheating in school is like not cheating in a
golf tournament, that it gives you an unfair advantage over others in the
competition.
It is not an excuse for cheating in either a golf
tournament or in a college that you do not have the same level of ability as
others in the tournament or college, or that you did not have the same level of
opportunity for training as others. When
you entered the tournament or college you should know the competitive level and
be prepared to compete fairly. Even more
than in golf, in academic life, doing as well as you can is the primary goal,
but that is not the goal that makes cheating wrong, what makes cheating wrong
is that it unfairly disadvantages the other people in the tournament or in the
college. This is the primary message
that must be conveyed if we are have students take the same attitude toward
cheaters that golfers take.
Except for pass-fail courses in which all students are
expected to pass, all courses are graded on a curve, regardless of whether they
are officially on a curve or not. It makes no difference whether each student's
progress is judged against some independent standard such that in a given
semester theoretically all students could get A's or all students could fail,
cheating affects your competitive ranking among students.
Some
may fine it distasteful that I am emphasizing competition so much. They may
insist that competition for standing is irrelevant to academic activities. This has a nice idealistic sound. However, if competition is not involved, then
in prohibiting cheating schools are primarily engaged in a paternalistic
practice. Colleges are trying to protect
students against their own poor judgment.
If that is the case, it is not unreasonable for students to claim that
they know what is best for themselves and that cheating, especially in a
required philosophy course, is not going to hurt them at all. When cheating is seen as unfairly
disadvantaging other students, it is the enforcement of a justified moral rule,
not paternalism that is being practiced.
There is such an understandable emphasis in education to
stress that its goal is the gaining of knowledge and skills by and for the
individual, that the competitive aspect of academic activity is downplayed.
Competition is something that businesses engage in, not academics. This
idealistic attitude, like all unrealistic attitudes, has some bad effects. Though it is true that the goal of academic
activity is the gaining of knowledge and skills by and for the individual, in
colleges and universities, this is done in a competitive context. To ignore the competitive aspect makes it impossible
to provide a plausible moral argument against cheating and for academic
integrity. It will be interesting to see
if this point of view seems acceptable to the participants at this conference.
It does have some interesting policy implications for school policies.
In order for this view of cheating to be successfully
presented to the students, it must be shown that the rules governing academic
activities really do generally result that those who do better in legitimate
academic activities gain a higher standing, just as those who demonstrate
better golfing abilities generally rank higher in the standing of the
tournament. It is also essential that
students know all of the relevant rules.
As with golf, most of these rules are self-evident, all work you turn in
must be your own. You should not take
credit for any work that is not your own, and should give appropriate credit to
whomever deserves it. However, not all
rules are self-evident,
even though they may seem so to the professor in the course. It would be useful if each professor were
able to hand out the idiosyncratic rules that she requires students to follow,
and it would be even more useful if there were no idiosyncratic rules.
Orientation programs concerning academic integrity or
cheating should be entirely student run.
They should make clear that it is primarily the non-cheating students
that are disadvantaged by the cheaters, not the cheater in the future or the
prestige of the school. It would be
useful to point out the arrogance of the cheater. Arrogance does not entail that you view
yourself superior to others, but only that you are not subject to the same
constraints of morality that everyone else is.
The cheater is allowing himself to violate
those rules that he would not be willing for everyone to know that they were
allowed to violate. He is taking an
unfair advantage. Faculty and
administrators must be clear and make clear that with regard to academic
integrity, their function is to protect the honest students from being taken
advantage of by those who cheat.
In order to help students realize that the rules are
designed to protect them from being taken advantage of, it would be useful for
students to have a real say in how the rules are enforced. I am not talking about a student committee
that adjudicates purported cases of cheating.
This involves only a handful of students, those who already have the
appropriate attitude about cheating.
Whether or not a college has an honor system, the vast majority of
students should have a say in how they want the rules enforced. It is not an entire college that is like a
golf tournament, it is each individual course. Students in those courses where
clearly different levels of enforcement of the rules are possible,
should have a say about how they want the rules enforced in that course. Giving students a real say in how they want
the rules enforced makes it clear to them that since they are the ones
primarily affected by whether the rules are violated, they should have some say in how they want the
rules enforced.
It may not be possible in every course, but for those
courses that have exams, students could pick either supervision or no
supervision, allowing the faculty member to pick between sporadic supervision
and continuous supervision. For courses
utilizing the web, there also might be different levels of supervision, or
kinds of exams. What is important is
that students should be able to express their view in a way that has a real
impact on the way their course is run.
They should not be forced to accept something handed down by the school
and which they might consider inappropriate for their particular course. It would emphasize in the most dramatic way
that it is the students who are most affected by cheating and that they should
decide what is needed in that particular course to discourage cheating.
The students could be presented with a form that
presented the different options and asked to vote for one of them. This should, especially after it had been
done several times, take very little time.
It would not only provide some opportunity for the professor to say
something about the honor principle, or lack of it, at the school, and how it
applies to his course, but it would give some importance to his remarks, for
they might be relevant to the way the students voted. Taking such a vote in every course would give
faculty a real sense of how their students regarded the course, e.g., how
important the competitive aspect of the course was. It would also give each student a chance to
express his own view on this matter.
More than a mandatory signing of an honor pledge, it
would allow students to say yes or no to whether they want their exam
supervised. A vote for supervision
would show that they were concerned enough about cheating to want supervision; a
vote against supervision would show that they did not expect anyone to cheat in
that course and so did not think any supervision was needed. If some students vote for no supervision and
then cheat, then they are so far gone that there is nothing that can be done
about them. To do this on the first day
of classes would show a premeditation with regard to
cheating that I do not think is the major problem. It would also let students who were thinking
of cheating know that other students did not approve of such activities. This would be true regardless of how the
students voted. The results of the
voting could be made available to the class.
There are many ways of deciding how much of a vote is
needed to have supervision or not to have it.
The simplest is majority vote, but it would also be appropriate for
schools to require a two thirds vote to go against normal school policy. So that a school with an honor code could
require a two-thirds vote for supervision and a school without an honor code
could require a two-thirds voted for no supervision. But regardless of the outcome having such
votes would provide a continuous and important guide to the way students felt
about cheating in that course. Changes
in student voting patterns could indicate trends that need to be examined. Differences the way students vote in
different departments' courses might also provide valuable information.
It would, of course, be a real effort to initiate this
kind of vote in courses,
If, not properly interpreted, such a vote might even have a bad
public relations effect if the outcome conflicted with the school’s
reputation. But I do not see how any
outcome could really be disadvantageous.
If the vote were overwhelmingly for supervision, this would not show the
prevalence of cheating. On the contrary,
it would show that the overwhelming number of students were so against cheating
that they voted to restrict their own freedom to prevent cheating by anyone. If they voted overwhelmingly for no
supervision, this would show that they did not think cheating was a serious
problem at all.
Since this vote has real consequences for the students
voting, it would provide a much more reliable guide to student attitudes toward
cheating than anything else we now have.
It would empower students in a way that had an important impact on their
lives. Most important, from my point of
view, is that is would make it absolutely clear to students that they are the
ones affected by cheating and that cheating in school should be tolerated no
more than cheating in a golf tournament.
It is going to take a long time to change student
attitudes toward turning in cheaters.
Misplaced loyalty is one of the greatest obstacles to morally good
behavior. However, many students do
realize that they are being disadvantaged by those in their course who
cheat. Initiating policies which enable
more students to see this more clearly, it is necessary to admit that academic
activities are inherently competitive, and to make this point evident to the
students as well
Fairness
Although “fair” is
now often used as a synonym for “morally acceptable,” in its basic sense,
fairness is playing by the rules. To
enlarge the concept by applying it to the making of the rules is to invite
confusion. It is not even clear what it
means to talk about having fair rules for a game. The clearest example of a game not being fair
is one in which some persons are not playing by the rules, as when the dice are
loaded or the cards are marked, so that a player has an advantage that he is
not supposed to have by the rules of that game.
Basketball gives an advantage to those who are taller,
but there is nothing unfair about that.
That advantage can be minimized by various rule changes, but that would
not make the game fairer, only less advantageous to those who are taller. Of course, if a game is supposed to be a test
of some skills, and it has rules that provide an advantage to some players
independent of their having those skills, it will not be as good a test of
those skills as another game that does not provide such an advantage. But that does not make one game less fair
than the other. Only when some players
are given an advantage unrelated to the normal or standard rules of the game
can a game be correctly viewed as unfair.
To talk about a person being fair presupposes that she is
participating in some practice with rules that everyone is required to
follow. A person in charge of hiring
counts as acting fairly if she hires people in accordance with the stated
criteria for hiring. It is a mistake to
regard the criteria for hiring as fair or unfair, unless there is a practice
that governs the setting of criteria for hiring. Fairness is not a basic concept, and it is a
mistake to use it as such. It
presupposes some practice that cannot itself be accurately described as fair or
unfair.
The practice that is presupposed by most who use the concept as basic is the concept of morality,
that is, a public system that applies to all rational persons. Fairness is an important concept within
morality; it is not a concept on which morality can be based. Part of the confusion about
fairness stems from failing to distinguish it from impartiality. Impartiality is more fundamental than
morality and is necessary for analyzing the concept of morality, but unless one
is impartial with regard to the appropriate group in the appropriate respect,
acting impartially need not be acting morally.
Only if a person is acting impartially with regard to an appropriate
group in an appropriate respect must he be regarded as acting fairly, but here
acting fairly is simply acting morally.
Whether or not a person is acting fairly is most easily
determined with respect to games, for most games have clear and explicit rules
and there is usually no doubt about whether or not a person is abiding by these
rules. But there are many social
practices where the rules governing that practice are not quite so clear. A person who benefits from a practice, but does not do what is required
for that practice to be maintained, is often regarded as acting unfairly.
He is not abiding by the rules that everyone who benefits from the practice is
expected to follow. This is explicit in
the case of adultery. A person who
benefits from being the sole sexual partner of
a spouse, but who has sexual relations with persons other than the
spouse is regarded as cheating on the spouse.
What is sometimes referred to as the problem of the free
rider arises, in part, because not all activities have clear and explicit
rules. People who regard others as not
bearing their fair share of the burden believe that there are clear, if
implicit, rules governing that activity and regard the free rider as violating
these rules. Often, however, calling
someone unfair is often simply a way of expressing moral disapproval, even
though there is usually a suggestion that this involves not playing by the
socially accepted rules. Cheating is more that simply being a free rider, it is
intentionally violating the rules that you know everyone is supposed to follow.
It shows, no matter what the motive, that you regard yourself as not being
subject to the same constraints of the activity that everyone else
participating in that activity is required to obey. It demonstrates an arrogance that shows itself
in even more harmful ways than cheating.
I am not against academic integrity, but I think that it
may be a misleading way to talk about the problem of cheating and related
problems. We are not primarily concerned
with the wholeness of a person or an institution, as talk of integrity
suggests, rather we are concerned with the proper behavior of a person participating
in the activities of an institution. This behavior can show respect for the
other persons who are also participating in these activities by abiding by
those rules that you expect them to follow.
However, a person who cheats fails to show this respect. By cheating he demonstrates that he does not
regard himself as bound by the same rules that he expects everyone else to
follow.