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> Are the students who cheated at Harvard being treated more like they wanted to be treated because they cheated? Had they gotten away with it, maybe! It depen
by genwin 14y ago
> Are the students who cheated at Harvard being treated more like they wanted to be treated because they cheated?
Had they gotten away with it, maybe! It depends on what the circumstances actually were. Like you say, they may have just been lazy. My point is that cheating, rule-breaking and lawbreaking can be okay under the right circumstances. If it's to unfairly gain an advantage over others, that violates the Golden Rule. In this case the students may have been justified, if indeed the exam was completely unrelated to the lectures.
> how do you know all the other people who are affected by your action would agree?
It doesn't matter what they think; they may well disagree with you. It was illegal for Rosa Parks to sit in the front of the bus, but her interpretation of fairness trumped the law. No doubt plenty of people felt that killing her would be a fair punishment; after all, her crime had large consequences, namely it fomented a rebellion, encouraging millions of others to break (Jim Crow) laws. Had the rebellion failed, history may have recorded that she was a horrible person, instead of her bus being in a museum.
> That's why we have ethical norms that don't allow people to make such judgments unilaterally in cases where self-serving judgments are highly likely and have large consequences.
So when there's a draft, people should trust their leaders and submit to combat, not bothering to examine whether the war is just? Many of those ethical norms are designed to benefit the privileged few at the expense of the rest. The "large consequences" are often a lie. The norms should be used only as a guideline for your own judgement, lest you become someone's pawn.
- pdonis 14y ago> So when there's a draft, people should trust their leaders and submit to combat, not bothering to examine whether the war is just? Avoiding the draft is a good test case that we haven't considered yet. It certainly meets my second condition, that people have a strong motivation to make self-serving judgments instead of correct ones. It also may meet my first condition: citizens who judge that a war is unjust probably can't claim to have significant information that their political leaders do not. (In fact, the political leaders probably have information that the citizens do not.) However, I can see a third principle that this example brings out: does the other party in the case, the one which is being "cheated" (the government in the case of the draft, the professor in the case of the exam), also have a strong motivation to make self-serving judgments? Certainly that is the case for a draft: political leaders have all kinds of motivations to claim that a draft is justified when it isn't. So in this case I would agree with you that "cheating" might be justifiable. I'm not sure the case of cheating on exams meets this third condition, although it could be argued that professors do have motivations, if not to purposely make exams unfair, at least to not expend a lot of effort making them fair. But professors also have motivations to keep students coming to their school, for financial if no other reasons, which gives them an incentive to expend effort to make classes and exams fair. > The norms should be used only as a guideline for your own judgement, lest you become someone's pawn. I don't disagree with this, but "your own judgment" is not infallible either. That's why I have been trying to find some principles that can help guide one's judgment. You appear to agree with this general idea, since you too draw a distinction between justified "cheating" and unjustified cheating. Your definition of "unjustified" is "if it's to unfairly gain an advantage over others", but that merely postpones the problem: what counts as "unfairly" gaining an advantage? That's what I've been trying to get a handle on.
- genwin 14y agoI'm a bit biased. I had a professor who informed his classes, after the drop deadline, that < 85% on any test meant an F for the semester. I had no opportunity to cheat. All but a few students failed. It was $hundreds wasted for me. He was demoted to a non-teaching position when everyone complained. In this case Harvard may go overboard on a crackdown, to shore up their reputation that's worth a lot of money to them. In that case the students may need to counter with a lawsuit, to restore fairness. > what counts as "unfairly" gaining an advantage? Ultimately it's best for you to decide, as fallible as your judgement may be. Anyone else may have their interests at heart, over yours. Their pet interests may be enshrined in the rules, the law, and/or the public psyche.
- pdonis 14y ago> I'm a bit biased. I had a professor who informed his classes, after the drop deadline, that < 85% on any test meant an F for the semester. Wow. In that situation I would certainly agree that the professor was being egregiously unfair. I'm glad that complaining at least got him demoted, but the school should also have corrected the grades of everyone who was affected--I'm guessing they didn't since you didn't mention it.