In my opinion taking adderal is definitely cheating (and very harmful to the body) because you have a synthetic advantage over other students. I also agree with the poster that on the spectrum of cheating abusing adderal is on the low end as there are much more serious ways to cheat such as stealing the answer key, ect. Just because you still have to learn the information doesn't mean its not cheating, I dont understand that arguement. For example, say someone took the same test your about to take before you. They tell you the topics the exam is on. You still have to put in effort to learn the material to answer the question, but obviously this is cheating since you have an added advantage over everyone in knowing the topics on the exam.
Does this constitute cheating?
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Please read carefully, I was responding to another poster's generalized comment about how legality fits into cheating. I prefaced my comment properly, and drew no comparisons to taking adderall.
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I voted "no." I do not feel that taking adderall constitutes cheating.
Also, there's a difference between taking adderall and steroids--- the steroids argument cannot be used.
Sports are based on natural athleticism. Taking steroids gives someone a huge advantage in an unnatural way.
Tests, quizzes, and exams are based one's ability to give answers from one's own brain. The way in which you attain the information to give said answers is irrelevant.
Cheating:
1) Getting the questions to a test before anyone else.
2) Looking on someone else's paper.
3) Stealing the answer key.
Not cheating:
1) Taking supplement that allows one to focus. <--- One still has to study.
If you give adderall to someone who didn't study, they're not going to pass the test.
Also, there's a difference between taking adderall and steroids--- the steroids argument cannot be used.
Sports are based on natural athleticism. Taking steroids gives someone a huge advantage in an unnatural way.
Tests, quizzes, and exams are based one's ability to give answers from one's own brain. The way in which you attain the information to give said answers is irrelevant.
Cheating:
1) Getting the questions to a test before anyone else.
2) Looking on someone else's paper.
3) Stealing the answer key.
Not cheating:
1) Taking supplement that allows one to focus. <--- One still has to study.
If you give adderall to someone who didn't study, they're not going to pass the test.
Taking steroids alone won't win races or set records, you will stil have to condition yourself and practice. You can't just take steroids and sit home on the couch and expect to be a good athlete.
The unfair edge is against others who work just as hard. The comparison shouldn't really involve the groups that don't study/exercise at all.
The comparison is fairly good, considering that both are exogenous synthetic compounds (generally, for steroids) that are also illegal and enhance natural capabilities within certain limits. And obtaining adderall, is not the equivalent and buying vitamin supplements at the local grocery store.
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I wonder how many of you who say it's not cheating take Adderall or have taken Adderall?
This depends on your definition of cheating. Do I think it's cheating? Yes. You still have to study the material. But it is an unfair advantage. Part of the reason stimulants are prescribed and the reason there is the ADA is to provide reasonable accommodations and a level playing field. If everyone's taking Adderall how is that fair? Just because you still have to study doesn't make it not cheating.
btw, I legitimately have ADHD, have had it per diagnostic criteria (before age 7). Those who abuse it are the reason I have so much trouble getting it in the first place!
This depends on your definition of cheating. Do I think it's cheating? Yes. You still have to study the material. But it is an unfair advantage. Part of the reason stimulants are prescribed and the reason there is the ADA is to provide reasonable accommodations and a level playing field. If everyone's taking Adderall how is that fair? Just because you still have to study doesn't make it not cheating.
btw, I legitimately have ADHD, have had it per diagnostic criteria (before age 7). Those who abuse it are the reason I have so much trouble getting it in the first place!
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In sports, the rules say that if you take steroids, you are cheating.
In education, there is no rule that states if you take Adderall, then you are cheating. Therefore, taking Adderall is not cheating. Now if there were rules that stated that taking Adderall was cheating, and you took Adderall to give you a boost, then you would, in fact, be cheating.
This is common sense.
As for unfair advantages: an unfair advantage does not constitute cheating. For example, there's a guy in my school whose parents teach Spanish in the High School. He's taking courses in Spanish. That means when he goes home to study, he also has access to two people who can significantly help him. Yes, he has a huge advantage over me, since I don't have parents who are Spanish teachers or parents who have taken Spanish in HS. However, he's done nothing that even closely constitutes cheating.
You have yet to prove that taking Adderall is cheating. All you have done was stated times and times again that taking Adderall is an unfair advantage, which does not constitute cheating.
When taking a test it does not matter HOW you were able to attain the information. All that matters is that you're able to APPLY/SUPPLY the information you attained to the actual test. Professors/teachers don't care how you memorize/attain information. All they care about is that you're able to supply the answers to the test w/o having prior knowledge of the questions/answers and w/o looking on someone else's paper during the test.
Read the rest of the thread. Yes, it's unfair, but he didn't have to do anything illegal to have Spanish-speaking parents.
I never said unfair advantage = cheating. I've continuously said that it's one important component. Please read my previous comments before making such assertions.
I think there is a contradiction here, or you didn't plan this paragraph out well. In any case, that seems to be a very personal opinion of why you take tests.
My personal opinion on the ideal objective of tests: is to see how well we retain the material from the class, provided we don't do anything illegal to gain an unfair advantage.
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You should read my post on the last page. Is it less "fair" for a person to unfairly take drugs you aren't willing to take than for a person who has parents who speak Spanish utilizing them in school?
You can't do ANYTHING, legal or illegal, to get Spanish-speaking parents. At least you have a shot to get Ritalin. In this case, I would actually think that Ritalin would even the score, and be considered cheating far less than using the parents (whether for knowledge, money, or whatever). Keep in mind that people who are just as smart as me didn't have to work at all during college, giving them the ability to study a lot longer than I had. If I took drugs, I would actually be LEVELING the playing field.
I still think it's necessary for us to define the question. Whether it SHOULD be cheating is a ridiculous argument, and one that will result in nothing. It's purely based on opinion, and as far as I can tell, everyone who has been arguing against the drug use is doing so from the point of view that it SHOULDN'T be cheating, not that it ISN'T cheating.
I've been answering the original question, which is asking whether it is cheating or not.
So which is it? If it's a "should" question, then I really don't have much more to say on that topic...
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I'm done. You're all over the place. So now you're saying doing something illegal institutes that it's cheating? Gimme a break. Just so you know, your argument would not hold up in a court of law. You have failed to prove why taking Adderall is illegal, and in a court of law, the burden of proof falls on your shoulders.
Goodbye and Goodluck.
Taking adderall without a prescription is illegal.
That's a good point too... which is why it's a terrible analogy. It shouldn't have been made in the first place... I am looking at you bigwill.
If the deficiency was severe enough to be diagnosed as ADD, and you could get the drugs legally, then that is how it should work.
Last part I agree with.
By the way, how do you think people who put anti-doping laws came to decide that doping is cheating? Clearly, there weren't ANY rules before that. Someone had to make that decision, like how we are trying to. No one said, "There aren't any pre-existing rules against doping in the IOC, so we can't consider it cheating at all"
Never mind the fact, that taking adderall without a Rx is unlawful by gov't regulations.
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I know I said I was done, but I have to ask this question. What does illegally taking adderall have to do with cheating?
As others have posted, if you were to get in trouble for taking adderall it would be because you were taking it illegally, not because you cheated by taking it. Seriously, how hard is this to understand?
The fact of the matter is that opinion doesn't matter in this situation. The point is whether taking adderall is cheating or not. And since there is no rule in an institution of learning (that I know of) that states that taking Adderall is cheating, taking Adderall is NOT cheating.
Oh, and to question the spanish parents thing: If you used your illegal mexican parents helped you study, would that be considered cheating?
^^ I have met both of your criteria: Illegal + unfair advantage.
We both you knew you weren't done, you just made some bad analogies and poorly worded statements. It's easier to punish someone for illegal possession, seeing as there is no codified ruling on adderall.
Alright, if you wanted to know if there is a clear-written rule in any university's rulebook? I'll suspect few, if any. But, then you are taking the OP's original post too narrowly.
This is analogy is mangled beyond saving. The steroids one is the best we have.
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but adderall users have no directed study towards specific topics. they're covering the same material everyone else is, just within a shorter period of time.
the main argument is that studying more and studying faster is equivalent to cheating. i don't think so. i think it's unsafe, unhealthy, and dangerous to take pills that weren't prescribed to you, but i don't think it's cheating.
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We'll both just have to agree to disagree. By the way, my statements were worded perfectly, and my analogy worked until you mentioned the illegal thing...
🙂
🙂
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the argument is unfair advantage in terms of studying.
you're studying "better" than someone else when on the pill
Sorry, I've been mentioning the illegal thing for the past 3-4 pages. It probably wasn't clear though. 😳
I read the rest as what appeared to be arbitrary views on how you would not obtain information. My views on testing differs, I guess.
Do you think the OP was polling what percent of our universities have a written rule to break about adderal, such that it is considered cheating? If so, I can say there aren't any written rules, and the poll should look like 90% No, 10% yes. But lots of ppl likely read it as SHOULD it be cheating.Tinman said:
Again, I agree, drug use =/= cheating. But refer to the post about MCAT being the sole determinant of medical school admissions. If one student went through illegal means that the other wasn't willing to do, did better on the MCAT because of it and beat out another applicant, then that's cheating.
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No, this isn't cheating. I think this ENTIRE THREAD is missing the essence of what exactly it means to "cheat."
From dictionary.com:
cheat
 
 /tʃit/ 
Show Spelled Pronunciation [cheet] Show IPA Use cheating in a SentenceSee web results for cheating
See images of cheating
–verb (used with object) 1. to defraud; swindle: He cheated her out of her inheritance. 2. to deceive; influence by fraud: He cheated us into believing him a hero. 3. to elude; deprive of something expected: He cheated the law by suicide.
–verb (used without object) 4. to practice fraud or deceit: She cheats without regrets. 5. to violate rules or regulations: He cheats at cards. 6. to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers. 7. Informal. to be sexually unfaithful (often fol. by on): Her husband knew she had been cheating all along. He cheated on his wife.
From m-w.com:
Main Entry: 1cheat
Pronunciation: \ˈchēt\
Function: verb
Etymology: 2cheat
Date: 1590
transitive verb 1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting <cheat death>intransitive verb 1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly <cheat at cards> <cheating on a test>
2 : to be sexually unfaithful —usually used with on <was cheating on his wife>
3 : to position oneself defensively near a particular area in anticipation of a play in that area <the shortstop
was cheating toward second base>The very essence of the word cheating lies outside of legal context and instead places its use within whatever government body (be it an academic institution, sports governing body, etc.) considers a violation of the rules that it has stipulated for whatever it governs.
Illegality is a broad term; cheating is a specific action. Everyone can agree that cheating is illegal (with respect to rules laid forth by a governing body over the activity being performed), but it is a fallacy of affirming the consequent to assume that the reverse is true.
"If a person possesses Adderall without a prescription, then it is illegal. Cheating is illegal. Therefore, a person who possesses Adderall without a prescription is cheating."
The fallacy here is applying the term "illegal action" too broadly. For an action to be considered cheating, its illegality should be dictated with its respect to the rules of the body that governs the rules of examination taking and academic honesty, since it has jurisdiction over BOTH whether certain actions provide fair/unfair advantages to test-taking students AND stipulates guidelines as to how to mitigate unfair advantages while test taking. Bringing local/state/federal law into the equation is irrelevant, as those governing bodies have no jurisdiction over determining an institution's academic integrity policy.
Just because an action isn't considered cheating does not/should not imply that it is a rightful/desirable act to perform in an academic context. However, it is only logical to define its action within the context of the governing body that creates rules for said activities because they are the only institution/body that dictates what constitutes fair/unfair advantage to begin with.
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This is fallacious due to the fact that the MCAT is not the sole determinant of the admissions process; I believe I already addressed this before.
If I was up against a Mormon in an examination, am I cheating by drinking my two Red Bulls the night before? After all, I went through means to increase my productivity that the Mormon most likely was unwilling to do.
Trick question or bad analogy?
First, no one in the US should be taking prescription medication without the proper Rx - that is a law we have all have to obey.
The analogy has too many open ends. Are all the classmates Mormon, and do they all believe that caffeinated drinks are breaking a clear rule (preferably written)?
If you want to use a dictionary definition and rhetorical argument, I can easily draw on the broad connotations of the word "cheat"
This was where we were 2 pages ago: which rules have to be broken. If you insist that cheating is only breaking rules define what action is cheating, then it is a fallacious argument that easily becomes chicken and the egg. So... technically, until some governing body defines a crime, that crime can't be committed? Gee, I wonder how they end up defining something as a crime. Did they haphazardly decide it one day?
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Ugh, I knew I should have thrown this all into one post (my fault). I commented extensively on the bolded statement in the post previous to the one you quoted.
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No, this isn't cheating. I think this ENTIRE THREAD is missing the essence of what exactly it means to "cheat."
From dictionary.com:
cheat
 
See web results for cheating
See images of cheating
–verb (used with object) 1. to defraud; swindle: He cheated her out of her inheritance. 2. to deceive; influence by fraud: He cheated us into believing him a hero. 3. to elude; deprive of something expected: He cheated the law by suicide.
–verb (used without object) 4. to practice fraud or deceit: She cheats without regrets. 5. to violate rules or regulations: He cheats at cards. 6. to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers. 7. Informal. to be sexually unfaithful (often fol. by on): Her husband knew she had been cheating all along. He cheated on his wife.
From m-w.com:
Main Entry: 1cheat
Pronunciation: \ˈchēt\
Function: verb
Etymology: 2cheat
Date: 1590
transitive verb 1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting <cheat death>intransitive verb 1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly <cheat at cards> <cheating on a test>
2 : to be sexually unfaithful —usually used with on <was cheating on his wife>
3 : to position oneself defensively near a particular area in anticipation of a play in that area <the shortstop
The very essence of the word cheating lies outside of legal context and instead places its use within whatever government body (be it an academic institution, sports governing body, etc.) considers a violation of the rules that it has stipulated for whatever it governs.
Illegality is a broad term; cheating is a specific action. Everyone can agree that cheating is illegal (with respect to rules laid forth by a governing body over the activity being performed), but it is a fallacy of affirming the consequent to assume that the reverse is true.
"If a person possesses Adderall without a prescription, then it is illegal. Cheating is illegal. Therefore, a person who possesses Adderall without a prescription is cheating."
The fallacy here is applying the term "illegal action" too broadly. For an action to be considered cheating, its illegality should be dictated with its respect to the rules of the body that governs the rules of examination taking and academic honesty, since it has jurisdiction over BOTH whether certain actions provide fair/unfair advantages to test-taking students AND stipulates guidelines as to how to mitigate unfair advantages while test taking. Bringing local/state/federal law into the equation is irrelevant, as those governing bodies have no jurisdiction over determining an institution's academic integrity policy.
Just because an action isn't considered cheating does not/should not imply that it is a rightful/desirable act to perform in an academic context. However, it is only logical to define its action within the context of the governing body that creates rules for said activities because they are the only institution/body that dictates what constitutes fair/unfair advantage to begin with.
What about # 5. Is taking prescription drugs without a prescription to gain an advantage academically not breaking rules and regulations?
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FWIW adderall is also a double-edged sword. Increased "energy" and focus comes with decreased response inhibition, cognitive tunnel vision, messed-up sleep/wake cycles, etc. Those who can make it in the long run w/o chemical assistance will be better off in the end IMO.
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I concur.
-You're a scientist, you have to narrow things down and control for variables. Otherwise, there will be too many confounding factors. It's still beats your leaky Mormon-caffeine analogy. Even if it were unlikely, is there cheating involved in the MCAT example?
-Your long post still does not make your analogy any clearer. After all, you are implying that his beliefs are fundamentally different.
-Many have already submitted a working definition cheating as gaining an unfair advantage through rule-breaking/unlawful/illegal means. Could you please define "cheating" as concisely as possible, it'd be so much easier to rebut your arguments then.
You should be a lawyer, not a doctor. Seriously, this is completely arbitrary on your part because all other students should abide by federal law regarding prescription drugs. It doesn't matter too much who actually doles out the punishment in this case.
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It's impossible to be concise when most of you waved off the notion that the intention of the rule/law being discussed does not matter, making it relatively easy for you to make the assertion that "since Adderall is illegal for those without a prescription, it fulfills the 'illegal' requirement of a cheating infraction." What I tried to do was frame the term "cheating" within the context that it is best used (an infraction against a governing body's rules/laws that were designed specifically to mitigate unfair advantages because they can best assess what does/does not constitute an unfair advantage).
All I'm trying to say is that "cheating" is not the right word to describe the person taking Adderall; that's all. However, just because I don't feel that cheating is the appropriate term to describe the infraction does not mean that I support Adderall's use as a "study aid" (or whatever you want to call it). A better context to define whether or not Adderall use is cheating is posing the following scenario:
Say Adderall were made legal; however, its potential negative effects were made known to everyone. Considering there would hardly be a rush to grab every pill they could, would this still constitute cheating, even though the threat of adverse health consequences would likely deter a lot of students from taking it? (This was the basis of my ephedrine question way back in the thread, since ephedrine IS legal and is VERY similar in structure to an amphetamine).
PS Ignore the Mormon analogy; I'd rather you focus on my other points.
I'll take that as a compliment because honestly, my arguments do not actually reflect my moral standards.😉
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Breaking the rules and regulations of...what? That was the entire point of that long post, that we should get away from using too broad a definition of "illegal."
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This begs the issue of whether taking Adderall provides an actual advantage or is merely a perceived advantage.
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I did not say anything about legality. Perhaps the rules of the University? I am just throwing things out there at this point. You know my opinion and I know yours. My thinking behind it is that the student is not only breaking the law (which we will ignore) but is breaking a University rule by taking drugs, whether or not that rule is directly related to cheating does not really matter to me. I am sure that not every possible way of cheating is defined by every University and that they take cases on a case by case basis. But that is just my best guess.
Lol, that was a compliment, about the lawyer thing.
I see why you want to limit it, but that is completely arbitrary for you to define the legality aspect of it. Tracing back in the thread, this was not your definition until your recent few posts.
Prescription drug law is important in this case, not because it prevents abuse of the drug, because it is an inherent equalizer for students who should all be law-abiding. Cheating is not about breaking any trivial rule, but about breaking rules that equalize and must also be obeyed.
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Not really. One could ride the "high" through the test then crash later therefor not affecting his/her ability until after, when it no longer matters.
Now is this reservation an moral one, or one stemming from concern of health risks?
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It's equally arbitrary to say it should be all-encompassing.
I didn't know how to come up with an argument against it until I realized that we were working off of one poster's definition that I didn't necessarily know was tailored down to support his/her argument.
It's a rule that happens to equalize, not necessarily a rule that was meant to equalize. And...thus we descend into the realm of teleological versus deontological arguments.😉
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Yes.😉
I don't believe grades are worth sacrificing health over, and I don't believe in using unnecessary "crutches" to further one's education (I see it as a weakness).
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The MCAT is a test that requires great understanding and analysis of topics rather than simply regurgitation of information. Also, the MCAT requires very long term study time. The concentration advantages offered by adderol would be easily countered by the fatigue disadvantages over this long study period. I'm sure someone using a normal study method for the MCAT could easily trump someone who relied on adderol provided they were of similar base intelligence. The non-prescribed adderol benefit is really only good for cramming situations only. Cramming doesn't work for the MCAT.
This doesn't disprove any of your other stuff. Just pointing out the MCAT example is a bad one.
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For those claiming 'not cheating', how do you view amphetamine use during a test?
Well, if you go out of your way to break any equalizing law, to gain an "unfair" advantage over others who obey the law, then it's still cheating in my book. But, we are where we were a few pages ago. I'll return when things get more interesting.
Your definition is still very ill-suited for defining novel forms - as Adderall appears to be - because it is entirely reliant on well-accepted and codified rules against cheating.
I understand, at the extremes the analogy is not very useful. If two people never studied, adderall gives minimal advantage. If both were on track for a 45 and studied a lot, then the advantage is minimal. It's just best to control for as much as possible.
But if you have a problem with it being an MCAT, we can change it to some midterm, and assume both are middle-of-the pack students studying equally with some cramming (normal ppl) who are competing for a limited amount of A's.
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To eliminate the issue of legality, let's work with the concept of financial disparity instead. Suppose I'm financially well-to-do, whereas the rest of my class is not. Suppose then that I manage to find a third party who is willing to provide extremely high-yield notes on a particular subject for a significant fee in order to save time on studying so-called "fluff" material in the course. Said third-party is a completely outside source (before you ask if this individual had taken the class previously and "briefed" me on what needed to/did not need to be studied for the exams). I then study from these notes and do well in the class. Would you consider that cheating?
To save time and misinterpretation, the comparison I'm drawing is between using Adderall to save time studying versus using high-yield notes to save time studying. The the comparison of the demarcation points are willingness/ability to break the law (Adderall) versus willingness/ability to pay a large sum of money for good notes/study guides.
Your argument is "ill-defined" because you have no quantifiable means of showing that Adderall actually confers an advantage to a student who takes it.
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I view it as idiotic/illegal, not necessarily cheating.
It would help if we actually had a study to work off of so we can attempt to quantify the advantages to be gained from using Adderall outside its intended use, but unfortunately, we don't.
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I dont feel like going through the last 5 pages so if this has been posted already I apologize...My undergrad university EXPLICITLY states their rules on academic dishonesty (which encompasses cheating). While every case is handled differently by our judicial affairs, a professor cannot just recommend action because he/she believes what has happened is a breach of academic dishonesty..this aspect of it is completely objective. After it has been reported each case is dealt with separately and is therefore more subjective and extenuating circumstances (ie group work where one cheated and the others had no idea and can prove it somehow). So by the way the rules go, taking adderall without a prescription is in fact illegal, however, it is most definitely not cheating, at least not by most universities academic dishonesty policy's. What you guys are arguing is more of an ethical/moral debate and my opinion is that adderall does give an unfair advantage but it has to be left at that until universities include taking psychostimulants illegally a breach of academic dishonesty....which will never happen
Here I'll admit to being nitpicky. It seems that the classmates simply can't afford it, it's a bit different than when everyone chooses not to use Adderall.
It's unfair advantage that we talked about earlier, but that alone doesn't make it cheating.
If it was well-understood (but not written) that the test performance was about personal work ethic and natural capabilities (with minimal outside help), and the rest of the class chose not to use this service, then the user would be cheating - cheating the system. This is a good case for considering new rules that control for this.
I suppose this is how steroids came to be considered cheating.
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Do better research. No drug is illegal for giving an unfair advantage. Drugs are illegal because you can get high off of them. This includes Adderall.
Drugs are banned in sports because they give you an extra boost. Drugs have not been banned in school, yet they do the same thing, apparently.
As I have said before, succeeding in school is a good thing. No one is stupid enough to ban a substance that would help people get smarter.
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BTW in an odd coincidence I went to the school the CNN report was on (Syracuse) and I can promise all of you that its use is RAMPANT on campus. I didn't know one person who hadn't at least tried it and most people I knew used it whenever they had any work to do. Pretty crazy looking back on it but I feel the need to reinforce my opinion that I do not believe its cheating.
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Not cheating. Probably much less useful than Ritalin, considering it would make you high (and less able to concentrate), but no more cheating than getting drunk or eating a peppermint.
Gee, way to miss to drop the ball; you are taking my quote wayyy out of context. The point was that if you wanted to define cheating only by written university policy against adderall usage, the debate would be very different. The intent, was to answer the philosophical question. And it's easy for me to say my school doesn't have a written policy against it, and would punish it for illegal possession. But should there be new rules against adderall use? Yes
Steroids = adderall isn't perfect, but it's the best comparison we've got. That's why the last line is there in my quote.
Good, your last sentence shows you've got some sense in you.
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Ritalin is an amphetamine...
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Good observation. I suppose I should have been more clear; because of my financial status, it's relatively easy for me to fork over the money to pay for the notes. It's not unaffordable to the rest of the class, but it would be a much larger financial burden for them to do the same, thus making cost a deterrent.
As my law-student friend just told me, this is where a jurisdiction needs to be explicitly defined for determining lawfulness of an action. The illegality of taking Adderall without a prescription doesn't cover the concept of "cheating" in federal law; thus, it is up to the academic institution to define such use as cheating in their academic honesty policy if they wish to prosecute a case as such.
I suppose this is the heart of the argument; the only problem is, academic institutions won't do anything about this issue until they have evidence/proof of how large an advantage such use of Adderall confers. This is all despite the fact that it's easier to just suspend a student for being in possession of an illegal drug than it is to try to prove they were using it to gain an unfair advantage in class.
This I agree with completely. It's good middle ground, and a good stopping point- so let it be the end of my presence on this thread... it's eating up too much of my time.
Well, it was fun and I applaud your tenacity and eloquence.
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Cheating means you intentionally manipulated the process in such a way that the test does not measure what it is supposed to measure. Generally, tests are meant to assess your knowledge or ability to apply knowledge. So using a study aide of any kind before the test, whether that be social capital or substances, is not cheating. Copying off of another person, or pursuading the professor to change your grade by bribe or threat, would be cheating.
Except the example proved little about legality. Holding a gun to somebody's head to get better grades may be both illegal and immoral, but the problem with legality is that it is not perfectly correlated with what is moral. For example, before lynching was illegal, it was still immoral. If holding a gun to somebody's head ceased to be illegal in certain circumstances due to an evil government of sorts, then it would not cease to be immoral. So if cheating is entirely law-based, then cheating is not inherently wrong, because the law is only roughly correlated with right and wrong. If you accept a law-based definition of cheating, then cheating is not really a morally meaningful concept anymore.
Suppose a drug was invented that allowed somebody to not sleep while on the drug, but that reduced their lifespan by a proportionate amount of time (i.e., by about a third times the time they're on the drug). This would be more extreme than taking amphetamines, yet just after the drug was invented it would not be illegal. Indeed, like most illegal drugs it would initially be heralded as a miracle drug that makes society better, until studies suggest that these people are dying earlier and aren't getting something for nothing. So does that mean using this drug would initially be "not cheating," and would constitute cheating after it is declared illegal? Morally and logically that would make no sense. Personally I would not use such a drug, even if it put me at a disadvantage. Would I view it as cheating? No.
The LAW itself is arbitrary by some definitions (capricious, unreasonable, and unsupported), as it is based upon precedents, judgements, and interpretations of otherwise ignorant people (juries, judges).
Except the example proved little about legality. Holding a gun to somebody's head to get better grades may be both illegal and immoral, but the problem with legality is that it is not perfectly correlated with what is moral. For example, before lynching was illegal, it was still immoral. If holding a gun to somebody's head ceased to be illegal in certain circumstances due to an evil government of sorts, then it would not cease to be immoral. So if cheating is entirely law-based, then cheating is not inherently wrong, because the law is only roughly correlated with right and wrong. If you accept a law-based definition of cheating, then cheating is not really a morally meaningful concept anymore.
Suppose a drug was invented that allowed somebody to not sleep while on the drug, but that reduced their lifespan by a proportionate amount of time (i.e., by about a third times the time they're on the drug). This would be more extreme than taking amphetamines, yet just after the drug was invented it would not be illegal. Indeed, like most illegal drugs it would initially be heralded as a miracle drug that makes society better, until studies suggest that these people are dying earlier and aren't getting something for nothing. So does that mean using this drug would initially be "not cheating," and would constitute cheating after it is declared illegal? Morally and logically that would make no sense. Personally I would not use such a drug, even if it put me at a disadvantage. Would I view it as cheating? No.
The LAW itself is arbitrary by some definitions (capricious, unreasonable, and unsupported), as it is based upon precedents, judgements, and interpretations of otherwise ignorant people (juries, judges).
D
DJ Khaled's Pet Tiger
Are steroids cheating if you're an athlete? Because we worry about the long term effects on the population if everyone were to take steroids, most would say yes. Even though it's a bit lazy to call something cheating - rather than offering a more concise term for using a substance that isn't ethical for everyone to take - most can agree that using adderall or derivatives without proper indication is "cheating" because it would put the population at risk if we were to all take the substance to "keep up." No one ever is harmed from getting enough rest, no one is ever at risk by drinking coffee (though I'd be willing to entertain a discussion about its correlation with anxiety disorders), and so for the reasons above I think it is indeed cheating. At best, it's sad.
