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Why is academic honesty important
Why is academic honesty important
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There is not a single person who has avoided being wrong throughout his or her entire life, or maybe even day. But also, nobody, or at least very few, accept fallibility as tolerable. Throughout history, there have been people who refuse to be wrong, and it often has lead to despondency. Although everyone wants to be right, fallibility is a necessary step to avoiding harm and improving the world.
Nobody wants to be wrong. It is associated with “shame, stupidity, ignorance, indolence, psychopathology, and moral degeneracy” (Schulz). Also, as people, we revel in other’s wrongness as much as we do our own accuracy, which has created an environment in which being wrong is unnerving to the point of a possible, legitimate fear. But not only is our society giving us the fear of being wrong, life is. Our existence is dependent on making accurate conclusions (Schulz). If humans couldn’t make accurate conclusions, then death would be upon each person extremely prematurely; therefore, a fear of being wrong is completely legitimate, but it is also mildly vacuous. Everyone is wrong at some point. Augustine said, “fallor ergo sum” which means “I err therefore I am” (Schulz). Being wrong is not only apart of who we are, but it also makes us into who we are. Fallibility is human and makes each person whom he or she is. It can allow us to change our worldviews, learn, and look through a “window into normal human nature”. Of course though, a sense of omniscience is seemingly the natural state of the human mind, while the opposite is generally true. Being wrong is much like death in that it happens to all and very few can accept it (Schulz). So, can one simply learn a lot and know everything to avoid being wrong? Quite the opposite is true, as Ro...
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...olumbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. © 2012 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia © 2012, Columbia
University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. Used with the permission of Columbia University Press. All Rights Reserved. Publisher:
The Columbia University Press. Place of publication: Not available.
Publication year: 2013.
Clinton, Bill. "'I Misled People.'" The White House. Washington D.C. 17 Aug.
1998. The History Place. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
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Caesar, Julius. The Civil Wars. Trans. W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn. N.p.:
n.p., n.d. The Internet Classics. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
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Burton, Robert. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not.
N.p.: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009. Print.
Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He questioned the very nature of why things were the way they were, while never settling for simple, mundane answers. Socrates would rather die searching for the truth than live accepting what he considered a blatant lie. I like to think of myself the same way. I too would rather examine the wonders of life rather than accept what I am just told. The truth is some can’t handle the truth. I on the other hand welcome it with earnest anticipation and fervent enthusiasm.
Oscar Wilde, an acclaimed Irish Poet, novelist, dramatist and critic once aptly commented, “Men become old, but they never become good”. The philosophical aspect of this quote relies on the basis that human beings are inherently malevolent. Through his pessimistic perspective, Wilde clearly captures the ill-disposed mindset of mankind. Moreover, there are various deductive arguments that discredit the optimistic depiction of human nature. One of the prime examples can be found in Kurt Vonnegut’s literature. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat's Cradle, through the illustration of his characters, the author symbolizes the four elements of human fallibility.
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
Why is it so difficult for us to admit that we’re wrong? Tavris and Aronson (2007) wrote that instead of backing down and apologizing, people have a tendency to continue to justify their actions even when irrefutable evidence is staring them in the face. They are guilty. They know they are guilty. They and everyone else can see the evidence that they are guilty. But they continue to justify their actions.
1. Conflicting views improve one’s moral reasoning, critical thinking, and mental dexterity, but difficult to accept because of their context and one’s cognitive dissonance (Dalton, Week 5).
G.E. Moore in his work Pricipia Ethica outlines that something complex can be explained by specifying it basic properties (qtd. in Schroeder). In contrast, Moore explains that something simplistic cannot be explained further by using basic properties (qtd. in Schroeder). To try to explain something simplistic by basic properties would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy because it is an error in definition and it is similar to the is-ought distinction.
Since Protagoras claimed that man is the measure of all things it is true or reflective of reality, then nobody is ever wrong about anything. This means that nobody deserves criticism, judgment, or correction for anything that they say, their beliefs, or their actions. Protagoras’ claim empowers us; it implies that each of us, as individuals having individual beliefs, are the creators of his or her own truth. Our truth is based on the social traditions in which we are accustomed to. Our truth is determined by our culture and our habituation. It is shaped by the experiences that we have had, those that are yet to come, and our precise biopsychology. There is no way a person can form a culture-free or perspective free belief. Truth is the relativeness of one’s inner most innate tug with morality.
Aristotle argues that the human function is activity of the soul that expresses or requires reason. This argument is found in Nicomachean Ethics approximately between Bekker lines 1097b24 and 1098a9.
During “On Being Wrong” Schulz talks about how we learn about being wrong at a young age by having testes, quizzes, and grades on assignments. She talks about how when the other kids see your grades they immediately begin to judge you and think that you are less intelligent, lazy, or that you are irresponsible by not studying or not putting forth enough effort on your school work. That is where the negative connotation with being wrong is engraved into our minds, but being wrong is one of the best ways our society learns. As humans we all make mistakes, our entire lives are run by trial and error system; when something is wrong you just have to keep adjusting your ideas and trying again until what you are doing is correct. The only difficult
From that point of view, knowledge is quite fallible as everything could be an illusion. An example of this could also be the “A Brain in a Vat”-scenario, (Philosophy Gym, p.25). This argues that one’s entire perception of the world could be false as the brain might as well be in a vat on an alien ship, being fed with stimulants in order for the consciousness to perceive things, while being unaware of its actual situation. The conclusion to draw from this is that we can’t know anything for certain. Or at least prove that anything we perceive is real. Therefore we can’t know anything for a fact.
Nothing in the world is completely wrong or, for that matter, completely right. While it may seem that in any given situation, there are only two outcomes, a right solution or a wrong solution, that doesn’t always mean the right one is obvious or even “right” at all. Instead, right and wrong are not absolutes that are applicable to every situation. In other words, not every wrong is equal. It is in fact possible for one thing to be more wrong than another. Isaac Asimov’s “The Relativity of Wrong” offers an insight to what makes something more wrong than something else. He explains in his essay that a common misconception exists in the belief that if something isn’t completely right, then it is wrong. Asimov debunks this belief by explaining
In Philosophy, we learn that it is okay to doubt things that occur in our lives. It is not only okay but it is a natural response to something you are unclear or uncertain about. Sometimes, though, the build-up of doubt becomes too much for someone to handle so they become suicidal or just give up trying to think about it all together. When this happens, there is a tendency to become cynical, and this is a tragedy because then you feel like nothing is really worth trying to figure out.
...believe in, in order to make a right decision. You can just as easily know in your conscience that what you are doing is wrong, but I am just claiming that it gives you an incentive when you think that someone or something might be disappointed with you if you go on doing so.
In the human mind there are many things that go into decision-making every single day. The strong impetus that drive one’s decision in a situation: certainty and doubt. These feelings that people often have are connected very closely. It would be extremely beneficial for each and every person to be certain in all situations. Both certainty and doubt can be, and have been, the deciding factor in reaching a goal or failing in reaching it. Doubt in oneself oftentimes leads to lack of certainty, and a lack of certainty brings about doubt, and this relationship is key to success or failure in all walks of life. Both certainty and doubt are extremely forceful elements that often alter decision-making and play a huge role in people’s lives and history,
You learn by practicing and being prepared to make mistakes. Do not let the fear of making a mistake stop you from stepping out in faith. God is your Father, and He will take care of your honest mistakes.