The "Cost" of Morality in Society

One of the interesting aspects of how society has developed involves the apparent evolution of morality and its role in society. It would be reasonable to conclude that the formation of an individual’s moral beliefs is mostly derived from two sources. First, as a child, individual morality is heavily influenced by parents along with the culture/traditions of their environment. Second, as the child grows the influence of these initial defining factors can increase or decrease as life experience supports or challenges those original beliefs. Therefore, an individual’s morality is largely defined by the morals of parents/community and how life experiences interact with those initial drivers.

While some may argue the finer points, humans like to believe that they reside in a society built upon the idea of a meritocracy in that an individual can become successful regardless of upbringing or circumstance by simply working hard and/or smart. However, for such a belief to represent reality instead of one’s mere false perception of reality, society must adhere to a specific set of rules to ensure that this ideal is met. Thus, the development and administration of morals for a particular society is different than that of those who comprise society because there cannot be variance in their application. Basically society must have one set of rules that is enforced universally for the idea of a meritocracy-based society to have any level of validity. Note that this condition is not the only element that is required to establish a legitimate meritocracy, but is only one of the numerous conditions that are required.

Unfortunately the law itself does not singularly define morality in a society because those who comprise society directly influence the law, both in its development and enforcement. With this in mind it is important to understand how individuals react to violations of the law, i.e. the moral code of society. This understanding can be difficult because of mischaracterizations of interpretation. For example one of the most famous “moral” structures is The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. However, nowhere within The Golden Rule does it actually say that one must or even should be altruistic or fair to others. If an individual does not care about the prospect of being screwed over in his/her relationships and interactions, then that person can screw people over as many times as he/she wants and still be in accordance with The Golden Rule. The quid pro quo nature of The Golden Rule demonstrates a murky issue regarding morality in society.

Another critical component of The Golden Rule is the idea of reciprocation. Negative actions are only relevant to The Golden Rule if another party can act in response to the pronounced negative action. Basically Person A is free to screw over anyone he/she wants if no one is able to retaliate. This realization is critical to the very notion of justice. For there to be justice an entity must exist that produces a certain morality and has the power to enforce that morality. In a society that entity is society itself, so when society has a fractured morality the ability to execute justice becomes more difficult and less certain. Therefore, it is important to ask how society responds to immorality in society.

When the public concludes that an individual has committed an immoral act(s), a vast majority of the time that individual responds in one of three ways. First, the individual acknowledges the immoral nature of the action, apologizes for it and commonly professes to be more vigilant in the future regarding these types of issues. Interestingly enough the public seems amazingly forgiving, especially to those in power be it benign power like celebrities or real power like politicians. Such forgiveness might be misplaced based on how aware the offender was to the original immorality of the action for rarely are immoral actions that demand a public apology to society “mistakes”. Sometimes the individual in question really is genuinely sorry and does live up to their vigilance pledge while other times they are not genuine and are simply attempting to minimize the detriment associated with their malfeasance.

Second, the individual holds steadfast to the idea that the action is not immoral and either ignores the characterization or tries to explain the action based on his/her analysis of the action and the motivations behind it. This action typically generates polarization between those who agree with the explanation or support the individual in general versus those who do not because they believe that the action is immoral and due to the lack of acknowledgment of its immorality the action will more than likely be repeated. Sadly this decision appears to be the most commonly selected among the three because the individual recognizes this split, which limits the power available to impose consequences on the individual for the action. Basically instead of admitting to doing something wrong the individual claims to have done nothing wrong.

Third, the individual defends the action by citing similar or worse actions that have been taken by other individuals in the past, making an effort to limit the “severity” of their violation. This strategy is commonly used by politicians and their defenders and sometimes falls under the understanding of “it’s not a big deal because everybody does it”; yet this strategy is inherently counterproductive and foolish. The main problem with this strategy is that the initial action is never actually justified or explained in a moral context; also the action is indirectly confirmed using “hypothetical” preambles like, “even if I did it…” Why would one attempt to lessen the presumed severity of an action if one did not take that action and did not believe its perceived morality to be controversial?

Furthermore not only does the individual indirectly admit to committing the questionable action, but a rational bystander observing the situation can only come to one conclusion. That conclusion is not “Oh that is why that action was taken, I understand now (agreement or disagreement follows)”, but instead “Oh, so you are an immoral scumbag, but according to you individual C is also an immoral scumbag”. Thus, society is given not a rational explanation for individual A’s actions followed by appropriate consequences, but a battle in the scales of immorality. Using rational analysis this strategy is clearly flawed, so how is it that politicians are still able to get away with criticizing the morality of their opponent’s to explain their own moral shortcomings?

Avoiding the easy answer of society does not function rationality, one important possible explanation for the lack of consequences to numerous violations of morality is that, whether or not society cares about an individual’s morality is subjective. There are telling signs that modern society has reached an impasse between morality and success. For example is there any real advantage to being moral if society views you as a successful individual?

There appear to be two major advantages that stem from moral behavior and the resultant “moral” characterization given to such an individual: 1) moral individuals tend not to violate social norms and the law, which significantly reduces the probability of criminal and civil action against them; a secondary element to this point is that moral individuals are rarely swindled, speaking to the old adage “you cannot con an honest man”; 2) moral individuals seem to have inherent advantages when cultivating allies for social and economic proposals largely based on perceived trustworthiness;

Unfortunately it could be argued that for rich individuals neither one of these advantages are meaningful. Simply looking at numerous examples in the criminal justice system demonstrates that the ability to be successfully prosecuted for a crime is inversely proportional to an individual’s net worth; successful individuals typically have larger amounts of wealth than average individual and are more difficult to prosecute for their transgressions, thus heavily limiting the first advantage to being moral. Also with large amounts of money and resources even if another swindles a successful individual, the losses are typically insignificant.

Also due to the fascination and allure most members of the general public have towards success and wealth, rich and successful individuals have far less trouble recruiting allies to their personal crusades both through their utilization of resources or perceived charisma. Thus having money and success can achieve the advantages associated with moral behavior via different pathways. However, having money and success also produce other meaningful advantages for individuals that are not associated with moral behavior. Further troubling is that behaving in a moral manner provides obstacles to becoming successful for they restrict passage along the shorter less scrupulous paths to acquiring success. It is much easier to swindle someone out of 5,000 dollars either directly through fraud or indirectly through influencing public policy over working 250 hours at 20 dollars an hour for a gross 5,000 dollars.

Therefore, with the simple understanding that morality and success overlap the same advantages, with additional advantages associated with success alone and with potential conflict between morality and success, for a number of individuals immoral behavior is justified in the attempt to achieve success. Achieving success is the critical element for the viability of immoral behavior, for while society tends to look the other way regarding the moral transgressions committed by successful individuals either in the pursuit of success or after achieving success, if an individual fails to become successful then society looks to punish the individual for those transgressions. In some respects modern society views moral behavior under a lens of “the ends justify the means.”

So what drives an individual to commit an action that could be regarded as immoral? For the individual in question an immoral action can be justified one of two ways: 1) psychological defense mechanisms are applied that allow that individual to perceive their action as moral and/or justified; 2) the individual does not care about the morality of the action and simply takes it to produce some form of advantage to get closer to becoming successful. Interestingly enough a number of individuals apply both methods first using psychological defenses then qualifying the defense with an “ends justify the means” attitude to support achieving the advantage through the immoral behavior.

The second “justification” has multiple iterations with some experiencing a slippery slope evolution starting with small violations that are more justifiable and slowly increase their tolerance for justification whereas others simply invoke the “ends justify the means” attitude from the beginning. To investigate this slippery slope element more, largely because it is actually worth investigating for those with a large-scale “ends justify the means” attitude are simply insecure fools, why does an individual speed when driving?

Clearly moral behavior involves not violating the law, but many people each day elect not to be moral, so how do they justify such a decision? Looking at morals in general, the problem with morality seems to be that people tend not to associate many tangible or even intangible rewards or gains with being a moral person. In addition to the perceived lack of advantage to being moral, individuals will frequently reason that they also give up something to be moral, the gains that would come from not being moral, i.e. the perceived shorter pathway to success.

Using the speeding example, suppose there are two individuals John and Smith who both travel to work approximately 63 miles away, with 60 of those miles on an expressway with a 55 mph speed limit. John elects to following the speed limit of 55 mph where as Smith decides to travel at 65 mph. In this example by being moral and following the law John loses about 10 minutes in relation to Smith in extra travel time. Of course there are consequences to being immoral for if Smith is caught in violation of the law by an appropriate agent Smith not only loses the time he would have gained by breaking the law, he will also lose additional time and be penalized financially. Also Smith increases the probability of getting into an accident of some sort. So with these potential consequences, why does Smith elect to be immoral? Smith would more than likely use a cost-benefit analysis with an associated severity and certainty of consequence analysis. Does such a methodology cheapen morality?

In a cost-benefit analysis morality could either be considered a benefit or a cost depending on the overall characterization of the action. If the considered action is in-line with the general character of the actor then morality will be viewed as an intangible benefit because it will help solidify that particular trait. If the considered action is opposed to the general character of the actor then morality can be viewed as an intangible cost because it could challenge any developed morality of the individual. The cost classification of morality can change if the individual changes his/her values, something that may happen with certain immoral actions to compensate for taking those actions. Not surprisingly the comparison between morality as a benefit versus a cost tends not to be equal because typically in human psychology positive elements are overestimated in their importance and negative elements are underestimated in their importance, which applies significant bias to this analysis.

What rationalization does an individual use to reduce the significance of morality in the decision-making process? One common strategy is the 'white-lie' rationalization. The decision-maker simply isolates everyone else from the consequences of the decision typically with the reasoning that taking the action will not hurt anyone. For example Smith may elect to speed when traveling alone because he will be the sole receiver of any potential benefits or consequences. With highway statistics and common physics reporting that the faster a vehicle is traveling when colliding with another vehicle the greater the probability for fatalities this “I am the only one bearing responsibility for speeding” reasoning is clearly flawed.

However, Smith may hold on to this flawed reasoning because of what he determines to be a small probability of an accident occurring, thus the more probable benefits and consequences still remain reserved for him and him alone. Of course a simple severity argument removes any remaining reason for Smith to speed in a typical situation because although the probability of an accident is low, the severity of the result more than eclipses any time benefit acquired by speeding in the first place, especially since the utilization of the saved time will be generally irrelevant. For example the additional 10 minutes of time that Smith saves each day in transit will commonly be squandered doing some unnecessary and superficial task; the acquisition of the additional time serves no real benefit, thus legitimizing the severity over the certainty of the consequence because the benefit is meaningless; i.e. there is additional risk for only superficial reward.

So what can be done to address the waning value of morals in modern society beyond writing analysis about the flaws in the logical processing of advantage over disadvantage similar to that seen above? One option is to increase the rate of punishment for rich individuals based on the presumptive moral structure that because the value of immoral action is largely applied to increasing the probability that one becomes successful, the more successful an individual the less reason that individual has to behave immorally. Therefore, immoral behavior by wealthy individuals can be viewed as more severe than immoral behavior by poor individuals. Interestingly enough such a mindset would almost be opposite the popular current mindset, for the transgressions of poor people seem to be more amplified in society than the transgressions of rich people.

The immediate problem with such a strategy is that executing a more severe punishment against individual A than individual B for the same infraction solely on the basis of income differential is not indicative of a fair and practical criminal justice system. Fortunately increasing punishment to the rich and successful can be a viable strategy by simply ensuring that lawbreakers are punished justly. Basically if the criminal justice system actually lived up to the ideal of being fair and practical, successful individuals will have a higher probability of being punished for their transgressions opposed to the current system, which produces unfair advantages for the rich and successful.

In addition crimes associated with avoiding the investigation of the truth behind an action, most notably perjury and obstruction of justice, should have increased penalties versus those that currently enforced in society. One of the principal ways individuals avoid prosecution for their crimes is committing these two above offenses in effort to limit the ability of the criminal justice system to produce sufficient evidence to convict and rich/successful individuals have a higher probability of executing these strategies due to their additional resources and contacts. Increasing the penalties associated with perjury and obstruction of justice will at least reduce the probability that individuals engage in these tactics and make punishment for such action meaningful against those who still choose to take them.

Also society must reduce the allure and admiration for the rich and “celebrity” in general for such a change will reduce the behavior of blindly following ideas by rich individuals solely because they are rich. Furthermore society must acknowledge the value of morality by applying associated pressure to wrongdoers. While the adage of “everyone deserves a second chance” is fine and appropriate, the number of chances one seems to get from society is directly proportional to level of success; in that the richer someone is the more immoral behavior is accepted both in magnitude and frequency. Society must change this perception, no more “fourth, fifth, sixth, etc.” chances.

Finally the societal attitude regarding success and the allowed lack of morality in its pursuit is interesting in association with the frequent complaints that are heard regarding the number of individuals that are incarcerated in this country. It should be of little surprise that there are so many people in jail because society has created a flippant mindset regarding the law regardless of the magnitude of the crime. When looking at the number of individuals in jail very few have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, thus they are criminals. This creates an element of hypocrisy because one cannot complain about the number of individuals in jail and yet not argue against the “succeed at any cost” attitude that society has developed.

Overall society has two paths to choose from: 1) accept society as it is now and the simple fact that such a society reduces the value of morals as well as increases the probability of significant divisions between classes and races, which will also inherently result in more criminal activity (whether or not this criminal activity is prosecuted remains to be seen); 2) reject this aspect of society and seek to eliminate the advantage cross-over between morality and success, thus at least restoring the character intangible values of morality to society, which should have a negative effect on criminality. Unfortunately as it currently stands the idea of hoping that morality somehow wins out in the end over the pursuit of success is a pipe dream; society must decide what it values more and if it wants to view itself as a meritocracy where success is determined by the power of an individual outperforming others under a consistent set of rules, thus making that success matter in any real psychological sense, then morality must win out.

Man or Puppet

One of the most enduring and controversial philosophical questions ever is the issue of whether or not humans have free will. The importance of this controversy emanates from its personal association of ego and the nature of societal evolution. Unfortunately there are times when the controversial nature of this question experiences an artificial increase in controversy due to ineffective comparison values based on the points of arguments. Basically there are times when appropriate boundary conditions are not applied and arguments boil down to comparing apples and oranges creating confusion and inconsistent conclusions. Therefore, it is important to state in clear specific language what definition of ‘free will’ is being utilized when arguing either in its favor or opposition. Note that the terms unconscious and subconscious will be used interchangeably.

Typically there are two legitimate definitions regarding free will: 1) The ability to choose between a set of options with the potential of develop different outcomes that can shape the future stemming from that choice. 2) Everything in 1) with the additional ability to formulate the set of options from which the choice will be made. Note that these definitions do not include weight or power in the decision making process. Just because an individual does not have significant influence to directly create a different outcome does not mean that the individual does not have free will.

For the purposes of this discussion ‘free will’ will be acknowledged as the cause of the action both in origin and execution, i.e. the second above definition. Note that it is not appropriate to view free will as “the ability to select an action which leads to the fulfillment of a desire” or “selecting based on existing values and characteristics to achieve a desire.” The reason is that such definitions are limiting because they does not contradict with determinism by identifying whether or not the person was actually in control of the decision-making, thus undercutting the chief issue of debate regarding free will.

What is the argument surrounding this definition? Realistically the question of free will is derived from two aspects of human thought: creation of choice and selection of choice (action). Thus, human thought can be broken down into three different constructs: 1) Using sensory, biological and quantum information an individual can consciously create a list of options regarding a given situation and then make a decision from those options. 2) Subconscious thoughts using sensory, biological and quantum information create a list of options that are then ‘transferred’ to the conscious mind and then a decision is consciously made from those subconsciously created options. 3) Both options and decisions are significantly influenced by the subconscious mind in such a way that free will is basically non-existent. Some would argue that there is a fourth option in that all choices are created and all actions are based on randomness, but discussion of such an option makes little sense because nothing substantial can come from it due to the inelastic nature of the argument. A side question also exists in that suppose option 2 or 3 is correct, can conscious decisions (even at low influences for 3) influence the subconscious created list?

The chief camp opposed to free will, determinism, would be best classified as aligned with option 3. Determinism concludes that all actions are predicted with the present dictating the future entirely and necessarily (every occurrence results from prior events), thus free will does not exist because no conscious choices exist because no alternative options exist, only one path is ever taken. When viewed through the lens of a math problem free will can be regarded as x + y = z where x is positive and z is greater than 5 (some boundary conditions exist for one cannot execute any desire action) whereas determinism can be regarded as past and existing conditions demanding that x = 2 and y = 4 thus one will always choose z to equal 6.

Some determinists even extend the argument to that because physics is reversible one could argue that all effects create their initial state causes; however, such a mindset is only technically correct not practically because spill one billion cups of coffee and never will the coffee ‘magically’ jump back into the cup from the floor even though it is theoretically possible. For humans all actions are traced back to biological events in the body and brain through sensory and information processing beyond conscious consideration. Determinists also like to point out that if determinism is false then actions are random and the randomization of actions also eliminates the existence of free will.

The nature of thought is an important consideration when discussing free will. What makes up a thought? Some determinists argue that free will does not exist in part because a vast majority of the information processed in the brain is unconscious. Therefore, how can free will exist if a majority of the methodology that governs the choices one makes operates outside of consciousness? Support for the above belief is drawn from one of the most famous neurobiological experiments thought to concern free will. In the 1980s Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment to observe the readiness potential in relation to perceived conscious thought. After the conclusion of the experiment it was determined from EEG recordings that the readiness potential occurred, on average, 350 milliseconds before a subject had the conscious inclination to act.1

Based on this information Libet and his supporters argued that the brain had already decided to act on a subconscious level before consciousness had determined to act, thus it was extrapolated that any action should have this same subconscious action component so no action was based on conscious decision-making making free will an illusion.1,2 However, Libet did not totally forsake free will despite what some may think. Due to a 100 to 200-millisecond separation between conscious recognition of action and the actual physical action, he concluded that humans had a conscious ‘veto’ power with which they could prevent actions, thus maintaining an aspect of free will. Some reinforce this empirical evidence of unconscious processing with the mindset that one cannot know until one knows. Basically a person cannot know what a thought will be until it occurs and this mindset is established by unconscious elements along with other physical and mental elements that are beyond the conscious mind.

However, there are interesting side questions to this issue both regarding the readiness potential and the so-called ‘veto’ power. Incorporating how the brain creates thoughts is necessary to deducing the validity of free will. It is not appropriate to presume every depolarizating neuron in the brain is akin to a thought. From a neurobiological level thoughts are created when a large enough depolarized neuronal network has been created throughout various locations in the brain. Therefore, in the nature of information processing it seems inappropriate to associate all neuronal firing that fails to create a thought as ‘evidence/support’ as information processing for a deterministic worldview. Thus, this so-called pre-conscious decision making process associated with the readiness potential may simply be spontaneous brain activity.

One aspect of consideration is to suppose that subconscious information processing is not able to produce the necessary depolarization cascade to produce a thought without an associated conscious addition. For example one may need to apply 10 psi to crush object A, but hand A can only produce 7 psi. No matter how long hand A applies pressure to object A it will never produce enough pressure to crush it. Therefore, hand B will have to be applied to produce the additional required pressure, just like a conscious thought may be required to depolarize enough neurons in the proper areas of the brain, either through elimination of inhibition or additional depolarization, to produce a given thought. There is belief that consciousness is dependent on information feedback between different regions of the brain versus an activation hierarchy. If this is the case one can argue that consciousness produces all thought because without consciousness there would be no thought, just incomplete information processing, and with no thought there would be no action.

Libet and other have also considered this conscious component (referred to as a ‘trigger’), but he and others more preferred veto ability. Unfortunately there are two major elements to veto theory that raise concern. First, if the action is entirely based on unconscious signaling (outside conscious control) then how could the consciousness “know” what to veto? In some context consciousness has to almost guess what action to stop. From Libet’s experiment there is a very small window (100-200 millisecond) in which the conscious inclination is developed regarding the action before the action actually takes place, but it is difficult to reason that a consciousness could identify the exact type of action and inhibit it in such a short time frame. Granted the lack of knowledge of brain leaves the possibility open, but it does seem unlikely. Another option may be consciousness having some ‘universal veto’ ability that is able to inhibit any unconscious provoked action.

Second, there seems to be a conscious inconsistency with a veto power. The veto power is associated with consciousness, but principle action is unconscious, which implies a sense of randomness associated with existing conditions. However, people do not tend have perceptions consistently pop into their heads like ‘Don’t wave my left arm’, ‘Don’t stomp my right foot’, ‘Don’t smile’, etc. Would such behavior in conscious context be expected of a conscious veto?

However, despite the ‘trigger’ or ‘veto’ it can be argued that conscious control does not govern all aspects of thought. Two separate types of thought can be expressed. The first type of thought can be classified as stray thoughts, those without rational cohesion. These thoughts spontaneously appear in the consciousness, but are improperly constructed and typically do not make sense. For example the thought of a purple dragon that blows cotton candy instead of fire appearing in the mind. These types of thoughts can also be associated with typical dream states and epiphanies (like the famous example of the aromatic structure of benzene being thought of as a snake eating its own tail.) The second type of thought can be classified as cohesive thoughts. These thoughts are triggered by conscious involvement and make much more sense than stray thoughts. Due to the involvement of the conscious mind cohesive thoughts involve better understand of how a person perceives and responds to the existing surrounding space (self, inanimate objects and animated objects).

Others would counter such a claim by asking where is the origin of the conscious aspect of thought if it does not derive from the unconscious aspect. That question is the big question and is currently unanswerable based on current neurobiological knowledge, but there is precedence for the elastic nature of the unconscious/involuntary mind. Zen monks, through a strict meditation regiment, are believed to be able to develop the ability to voluntarily influence previously involuntary biochemical and neuronal processes in the body.3,4

In addition one point of contention with individuals who claim that either alien hand syndrome or anarchic hand syndrome supports a lack of free will is that these conditions are products of a broken system (damaged brain). It is not appropriate to draw conclusions about a working and functional system by observing the behavior of a broken system. To the point of conscious requirement for movements, theorized above, being disproved by these syndromes again the broken system could remove conscious or unconscious inhibitory controls that would originally prevent the movement, which would require conscious intervention to overcome (primary motor cortex relationship with premotor cortex).5 Eliminate this inhibitory action through breaking the system and conscious intervention is no longer required.

It would be similar to having a sluice controlling water flow through a dam and then punching a hole in the dam. After creating the hole the sluice does not have much of a purpose anymore with regards to controlling the flow of water. There is evidence to suggest that the unconscious behavior is the result of autonomous activity in the primary motor cortex with a lack of input from the premotor cortex, thus offering an explanation for unconscious actions in these situations.5,6

Likewise it is not appropriate for individuals to claim that after the application of an external electrical stimuli to the brain results in some form of involuntary movement supports a lack of free will. The brain functions through sending electrical and chemical signals between neurons to culminate the production of thought and action. Typically the applied electrical stimuli in these experiments are of significant magnitude that they create a large enough signaling depolarization cascade that normal operations can do little to stop. It would be akin to stating that sea walls do not function as designed on any level when a 10 ft. wall fails to stop a 30 ft. tsunami. Also when the electrical stimulus is applied there is no direct application concerning whether ‘unconscious’ or ‘conscious’ neurons are chiefly influenced due to a lack of knowledge.

Another argument made by determinists is that the existence of free will is an emotional reaction by individuals who must be ‘reassured’ that their interactions with others and society make logical and emotional sense, especially in the context of morality. Unfortunately this position is not a useful point of argument because it does nothing to address the question of whether or not free will exists. Whether or not someone believes something exists has no influence on whether or not it actually does exist on an absolute level. Although it is understandable why such a mindset would be naturally occurring in most people.

Others argue that determinism is essential because if one is responsible for actions taken/decisions made in one given situation then one must be responsible for how one is as a person. However, it is argued that this premise cannot be correct because at one point there must have been an origination of the person being that person. Basically humans cannot create him/herself or mental states ex nihilo. However, this belief seems to be dependent on the assumption that free will exists from birth… what if that is not the case?

Can one claim that an individual has free will upon birth? Based on the first definition provided above the answer could be yes depending on one’s personal viewpoint regarding choice selection. Based on the second definition provided above it is difficult to conclude yes because without having an understanding of self one cannot understand the rationality behind the choice offered, thus one cannot influence those choices with the conscious aspect of the thought. No infant upon birth has an understanding of self, thus no infant can have free will based on the second definition. Until that recognition of self occurs free will cannot exist. Upon recognizing self one creates conscious influence on existing boundary conditions and can exert influence on both choice creation and choice action. Self in this situation could arise from the principle of emergence based on a maturation of neuronal processing.

One confusing aspect of determinism is the attempt to argue that fatalism is not an inevitable response. Determinists like to argue that people confuse fatalism and determinism. The argument is that individuals become skeptical that they can control their desires and motivations, thus they elect to not even try. Another means to state this issue is that those suffering from fatalism believe that their choices have causes, but no resultant effect thus they have no influence or power. However, the only difference between fatalism and determinism is state of mind. The reality for both determinism and fatalism are the same, one is powerless to create a different future from what is already determined by the existing conditions created by past events. The details regarding whether the inevitability of the future is due to causality or not is rather irrelevant.

The problem with attempts to differentiate determinism and fatalism is that they do not make any sense. If determinism is correct then individuals cannot control what happens, so it does not matter whether or not they try to apply effort to influence their actions because those actions occur anyways. Also even in fatalism an individual’s choices have causes and effects because the basic concept of determinism is built upon that reality. Suppose John wants to give flowers to Suzie so he orders flowers from Delivery Company A (Action 1). Delivery Company A assigns the flowers to be delivered by Jason. (Action 2). Jason delivers the flowers and Suzie gives John a kiss (Action 3). Even if Jason has no choice in the matter (action 2 must be taken) the completion of action 2 is required for the execution of action 3 at that particular moment, thus action 2 has a cause and an effect. Granted Jason still is powerless, but his ‘choice’ is required for the world to function, thus Jason makes the choice to deliver the flowers no matter what because that is what the past and current boundary conditions force him to do. Overall based on existing empirical evidence and logic it is difficult to conclude that determinism, as a matter of direct influence of choice, is a serious threat to the existence of free will.

However, removing the threat of determinism from choice selection is not the only barrier to supporting free will. For the purposes of this debate only option 1 corresponds to free will. Almost immediately option 2 could create a problem for those believing in free will. A more extreme position on free will is taken by Descartes and John Paul Sartre claiming that humans have a form of ‘absolute freedom’ where the only restriction on a free will is that it always must be free. This position does not appear to be correct based on how information is processed in the brain because there are unconscious inputs that more than likely will always remain unconscious and thus cannot be influenced by the conscious mind. These unconscious inputs will place inherent boundary conditions on the means in which free will can operate limiting the number of choices that can be created even if the conscious mind can create the choices. Realistically the only way to agrue a position of ‘universal’ freedom for free will is to believe that free will is driven by an element that exists beyond these unconscious processing factors, a soul for instance.

Some liberalists (free will advocates) argue that just because free will is not absolutely free that fact that people can make choices still means that free will exists. It is similar to saying that something is not true because there is a lack of absoulte knowledge. This statement can be divided into two different aspects. First, absolute freedom means the ability to do anything even if it violates the laws of physics. Clearly it is inappropriate to take this definition when regarding absoulte freedom. Second, absolute freedom means the ability to do anything within the boundary conditions created by uncontrollable elements like the laws of physics, chemistry, etc. The concern with this explanation is that can something really be considered free will if the available choices one can choose from are created outside of that freedom?

Some attempt to provide support for an unconscious choice creator by demonstrating the dominant role the unconscious mind plays on behavior. The interesting aspect of this argument for the unconscious role is that the unconscious mind does not come into being as a complete rigid entity, which cannot gain new information processing abilities or capacity as one ages. Like the conscious mind, the unconscious mind grows and learns over time, most likely with a heuristic processing methodology. It could be reasoned that this learning method could be influenced by conscious action through either the expansion of existing ideas into new previously unconsidered ideas (spark of inspiration) or through continuous specific decision making invoking greater long-term potentiation (LTP) probability. Countering the determinist mindset of ‘one cannot know until one knows’ LTP actually can create higher probabilities of knowledge prediction. In one respect through LTP conscious decision-making could influence unconscious choice creation to a point where it becomes more conscious than unconscious based on ‘rigging’ the heuristic processing of the unconscious part of the mind.

Libertarian free will supporters also attempt to break through determinism by arguing that the indeterminism of quantum mechanics creates sufficient randomness so that past elements cannot have only a single outcome condition and without determinism free will exists by default. Ignore for the moment that this randomness does not address the potential choice creation of the unconscious mind, determinists also raise the question that if quantum randomness exists then how can one conclude that this randomness is not the governing factor in decision making and action versus the individual actor? Some even go so far to suggest that any real randomness would make the whole world independent of any earlier states.

The problem is the anti-randomness group only seems to focus on the extreme aspects of randomness. This belief is silly because the world does not exist on a string of numerous random elements placed together. Instead random events can occur, but the extent of those events is controlled by various existing boundary conditions, which are established by past events/action and existing conditions (including one’s brain function). To John Fiske and others these boundary conditions are what prevent a sane mother from strangling her first-born child. Note that whether one wishes to suggest that these boundary conditions forgo real randomness is a matter of question. Is real randomness the possibility that everything could happen or that something (but not necessarily anything) randomly happens? Free will is based on the notion of option two; for example mental illness could be viewed as the loss of the conscious second parameter of choice, thus random actions are taken within the boundary conditions available.

Finally between the determinists and liberalists are the compatibilists who maintain that determinism is compatible with free will. Sadly compatibilists are rather pointless players in the real debate regarding free will because they do not seem to actually want to debate the existence of free will. Compatibilists define free will as “the freedom to act according to one’s determined motives without hindrance from other individuals.” Recall earlier that such a definition was viewed as inappropriate because it does not influence the nature of the debate on the existence of free will. The concern with the compatibilists viewpoint is that they appear to only care about free will as a relative concept not an absolute concept. Take David Hume who states that the concept of free will spoken of by compatibilist should not be viewed as an actual choice, but instead the person will always make the one decision that he/she is required by the universe to make based on the existing conditions. Basically compatibilists believe that all that matters is that people think they have free will not whether or not they actually have it because in absolute terms they don’t because it is a deterministic world.

Daniel Dennett exemplifies this viewpoint where he states the only well-defined things are “expectation”. Without total knowledge individuals have the ability to act differently from what anyone expects, which demonstrates free will. In some context this viewpoint is such that free will exists because humans do not know enough to say that it does not exist, but that is not addressing the real question of whether or not free will actually exists. Compatibilists are determinists who, for what ever reason, do not have the capacity to accept the ‘lack of control’ consequences of determinism and instead take a position that is basically a cop-out refusing to address the real nature of free will and its validity. The only way this position is not a cop-out is making the argument that humans will never know, within reason, if absolute free will exists and making such a statement is not wise as the history of predicting the future has demonstrated. For example in the 1910s one could suggest that no one would ever know what it was like to walk on the moon and almost everyone asked would wrongly agree.

On a side note regarding the Newcomb paradox, it does not appear to be paradoxical on its face. The paradox appears to be derived from inconsistent definition of the initial conditions and power of the predictor. For example the paradox stems from a perceived conflict between two decision making strategies derived from two separate philosophical arguments: 1) Past events cannot be affected so future action cannot influence a past event; 2) The prediction of the Predictor establishes equivalence between the choice and the content of the opaque box which is determined by the prediction of the Predictor. Therefore, the choice in the future affects the past prediction.

There are two questions that influence this issue, one directly and one indirectly. The direct question is whether the dominance principle or expected utility hypothesis is the superior choice. The indirect question is whether or not free will exists. Addressing the first question the obvious choice is to select only box B (expected utility). The logic of this choice is demonstrated through mathematical probability payout. If the Predictor is correct selecting A and B will only net $1,000 whereas selecting only B will net $1,000,000.

If the Predictor is incorrect then logic entails that selecting A and B is the best course of action netting either $1,000 over $0 or $1,001,000 over $1,000,000. However, this second reasoning is flawed because it does not take the probability of Predictor accuracy into account. Instead it only uses standard game theory reasoning at a basic single action level (similar to the simplest Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario). The key element to this issue is the predictive capacity of the Predictor. If one believes that the Predictor has an accuracy capacity rate exceeding approximately 50.05% selecting B makes more money. Normally one could conclude that because there are more possibilities below 50.05% than above one should select A and B, but the paradox presumes the Predictor is very accurate, if not completely accurate, therefore the probability that its accuracy capacity is lower than 50.05% is zero. The problem with invoking the viability of the dominance principle in Newcomb’s paradox is that the dominance principle is flawed on its face because it does not consider scale relative to probability of occurrence.

The indirect question in the Newcomb paradox of the existence of free will or not is not applicable. The reason for this irrelevance is because the issue of free will is entirely defined by the predictive capacity of the Predictor. If the Predictor is flawless then no free will exists because the Predictor is an agent of determinism, which uses the past events and current boundary conditions to define the near future. If the Predictor can be incorrect then free will can exist because there are elements that can influence events that cannot be predicted through deterministic processes. However, in the paradox the individual outlining the boundary conditions when stating the paradox determines the predictive capacity of the Predictor. Therefore, the issue of free will is completely determined by the bias of the individual introducing the specific parameters of the paradox. To those who argue that free will is defined in the problem even if the Predictor is always right, that “free will” is relative free will not absolute free will (basically the individual making the decision does not realize that he/she has no choice in the decision).

Largely the question of free will boils down to the expected definition. Based on what is known biologically it is difficult to argue that determinism eliminates the ability to choose and for those choices to impact the future in such a way that different outcomes would fail to emerge. It seems that most determinists focus on demanding that liberalists have the burden of proof aspect where both sides actually have to prove their position for there is no suitable default position. However, there is an issue with the nature of the legitimacy of free will being defined in how choices are created in the first place. It stands to reason that the conscious mind is not exclusively responsible for all of the information processing that allows for the creation of existing choices. The question is how much conscious thought must go into the creation of the choice(s) for it to be judged as ‘created by consciousness’ over unconsciousness? The difficulty of that question makes it difficult to conclude in either the affirmative or the negative about the validity of free will. Overall for all of the semantics that are used about free will answering the question of choice creation, not choice action, appears to be the most important question of all.

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Citations:

1. Libet, B, et Al. “Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activities (readiness-potential); the unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act.” Brain. 1983. 106:623-42.

2. Libet, B. “Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action.” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1985. 8:529-566.

3. Dooley, C. “The impact of meditative practices on physiology and neurology: A review of the literature.” Scientia Discipulorum. 2009. 4:35-59.

4. Carruthers, M. “Voluntary control of the involuntary nervous system; Comparison of autogenic training and siddha meditation.” Experimental and Clinical Psychology. 1981. 6:171-181.

5. Assal, F, Schwartz, S, and Vuilleumier, P. “Moving with or without will: Functional neural correlates of alien hand syndrome.” Annals of Neurology. 2007. 62(3): 301–306.

6. Kayser, A, Sun, F, and D'Esposito, M. “A comparison of Granger causality and coherency in fMRI-based analysis of the motor system.” Human Brain Mapping. 2009. 30(11): 3475–3494.

Winning Back Honesty

It can be said that human beings in general are akin to water in that they seek the path of least resistance. The epidemic of cheating and unethical behavior, especially in education, has become more rampant in the past decades largely due to the inception and development of the Internet, which has made dishonesty easy. Schools as early as middle schools to as advanced as prestigious universities are experiencing this problem, thus the increase in the number of cheating and other unethical behavior events is not isolated to any specific age group, but permeates a majority of them. So the question is what can educational institutions do about this problem?

A number of individuals argue that it is important to understand the psychological triggers that lead to this unethical behavior and counter them at the source. However, the efficacy of such a mindset is put at risk when unethical behavior is motivated by rationalities such as “need good grades, but don’t want to work for them”, “I don’t need this class for the future, but it is required so cheating doesn’t matter”, “I have too many other important things to do” or even “everyone else cheats (despite having no evidence of this) so why should I have to work hard?”. How does society challenge a mindset that is basically predicated on laziness and apathy? Complicating the problem is that there is rarely a single governing reason for cheating, instead numerous reasons similar to those above are intertwined, thus attacking one reason in isolation cannot be the strategy, yet attacking multiple strategies is overly complicated and may create excess necessary work for instructors that will not be compensated.

One of the most counterproductive elements regarding cheating is how society tries to obfuscate the blame. Instead of blaming the cheaters themselves people apply blame to the school, the instructors, the parents, peers, heck it almost seems like some would rather blame Taylor Swift versus actually blaming the cheaters. Frequent is the ridiculous claim that instructors drive ‘justifiable’ cheating because they don’t clearly demonstrate the relevance of the class or make the class interesting. Even the most plausible excuse for cheating, forgiving plagiarism because students don’t have an explicit definition of it, seeks to defer blame because it suggests that someone else should have taught students both the definition of plagiarism and that it is unethical because these students are so inept they cannot do these two things for themselves. Until society is prepared to place the onus of cheating on the individuals who are actually committing the action there is little that can be done to genuinely stem the problem. The first step to placing the onus of cheating on individuals is to apply significant punishment to those who cheat.

There are three chief elements which encapsulate the problem of cheating in education: students cheating on tests, students plagiarizing work they find on the Internet including purchasing papers from paper mills and instructors changing answers on tests. Addressing the first element raises an immediate question regarding test structure. The most obvious way to address students cheating on tests is for the instructor to give essay tests. It is very difficult to cheat on an essay test when the questions are not previously known, especially when test questions are scrambled and alternated between rows. Essay tests also have the advantage of judging whether students not only understand the basics of the subject, but can also translate those basics into more complex ideas over regurgitating memorized facts. This methodology can also psychologically demonstrate to students that there is meaning behind understanding the basics. The chief disadvantage of essay tests is the additional work demanded of instructors to create and grade them, especially in large (30-40 student) classes because no additional salary or respect is drawn for this additional un-required workload.

Regardless of whether or not an instructor uses essay tests or another testing format, an important element to limiting cheating is to control the situation by creating a standard and uniform testing environment. For example one such environment is outlined below:

- On the day of the test when students enter the classroom they place their books and all other objects brought to class against a sidewall including the removal of caps and hats then students sit at their respective desks.

- The instructor creates two separate tests using the same questions, but in different order. The instructor hands out the tests facedown along with a #2 pencil to alternating students in such a way that a student is surrounded by individuals with the other test. This strategy heavily limits the positive outcomes for a student who decides to look at another student’s paper or makes it incredibly obvious to anyone proctoring the exam that someone is looking at another’s paper. For example a 30-student class with a 6 x 5 square desk arrangement with tests A and B would see a distribution as followed:

A B A B A B
B A B A B A
A B A B A B
B A B A B A
A B A B A B

- It is thought among ethicists that a vast majority of people are honest because they are not faced with temptation, not because they stare down temptation and walk away from it. This psychological reality may be why the laughable ‘Entrapment’ defense in the criminal justice system even exists. The two above steps are designed to reduce available ‘cheating’ temptations, thus reducing the amount of work any proctor has to engage in to provide honest evaluation.

- When the period begins the students will be instructed to turnover their tests and begin. During the test if the instructor sees anything that is not a #2 pencil or the test in a student’s hand or on/around his/her desk that student will receive a zero on the examination and be sent to the principle’s office.

- The instructor will proctor the exam from the front of the room watching for any inappropriate behavior. If any is witnessed the instructor will place a small token on the desk of the offending student and make a record of the offense. If a single student receives three tokens over the course of an exam then there will be a predetermined consequence. It is understandable that some individuals may view this element as worrisome because of the possible power abuse that can result. For example it is no secret that there are situations where instructors and students do not get along and that dislike can evolve into bias. In the above situation credibility involves a instructor-said student-said structure because other students are taking the exam. However, with the above testing environment it is unlikely that such a system will be heavily utilized. Students will be able to inquire on the reasoning behind any tokens after the completion of the test and will be able to appeal if he/she believes that a three token ‘performance’ was unfairly/inaccurately awarded.

- At the end of the period students will place their completed exams in a box positioned on the instructor’s desk. The instructor will remove the box eliminating the ability to turn in the test (resulting in a zero) 30 seconds after the class period has completed. If a student completes his/her exam early that student will not be allowed to retrieve possessions until the end of the period. The idea behind this restriction is to mitigate additional distractions and inter-period cheating by granting access to electrical devices.

The above outline only addresses how to stem cheating in a single class it does not address stemming cheating between classes. Normally, especially in high school when there are multiple periods of the same class and students do not have a single testing session, opportunity exists during common periods for early period students to tell friends in later periods about the test revealing unethical details. For example someone who takes the exam in 1st period may tell a friend in a common 3rd period class about the test that the second person will take during 5th period. Multiple tests eliminates this cheating opportunity because individuals may not be getting the same questions, thus any information about specifics acquired from previous test takers will not be applicable.

There are two popular means of utilizing a multiple test methodology. First, three different tests are created, 1st and 2nd period are given test #1, 3rd and 4th period are given test #2 and 5th and 6th period are given test #3. Therefore, there is no reasonable time frame in which relevant test questions can be transmitted to other individuals either electronically or verbally. Second, three different tests are created and all students randomly receive a copy of a given test.

This second strategy has strengths and weaknesses versus the first method. The chief weakness is that cheating is only limited to a random probability of 33% for success instead of basically 0% for the first strategy. The strength is that keeping the multiple tests a secret will result in a 67% chance that the latter student involved in any cheating will have a lower performance probability due to inaccurate information. Therefore, those who attempt to cheat will actually have a significant chance at putting themselves at a greater disadvantage versus not having attempted to acquire unethical information in the first place. The long-term hope is that after realizing the inaccuracy of the illicit information, individuals will no longer seek the information viewing it as a waste of time.

Overall thought it stands to reason that if the idea is to reduce the ability of individuals to cheat the consistency of the first methodology proves superior to the benefit/cost risk structure of the second methodology. However, some caution must be taken, for depending on the circumstance after the completion of the test some students may complain that certain periods received more difficult questions than other periods which would raise concern that grades are more influenced by what period an individual was in versus what that individual actually knew pertaining to the subject matter. While a possibility, the above concern is rather muted if the instructor practices appropriate test design.

The second chief element to educational cheating is students plagiarizing work they find on the Internet. The first issue when developing a counter strategy to this form of cheating is to determine whether or not the instructor will include homework and quizzes in the final grade. If the instructor will include homework/quizzes in the final grade then the instructor can give numerous small ½ to 1 page long essay assignments that can create an ‘answer fingerprint’ for given students. This fingerprint will indicate a particular style of writing, sentence structure, word choice, presentation depth, etc. that can be used by instructors as a metric for longer more detailed papers to detect inconsistencies and potential plagiarism. Issuing the quizzes in class precludes the ability to use the Internet from the beginning to contaminate the samples.

If homework/quizzes are not going to count towards the final grade then the above strategy will more than likely not be successful for most students because in modern culture most students tend not to view the intangible rewards of knowledge that come from doing homework. If material is not going to affect the final grade most judge that there is little reason to actually perform the work. If the work is not completed then there is no ability to create a reliable ‘answer fingerprint’, thus there is no standard to compare to future works. In this situation it stands to reason that the total number of graded elements will be small, suppose two to four. If this is the case then one strategy to address potential plagiarism is to split the assignment into two parts. First, the students write the paper and second the students have to defend the position taken in the paper on a ‘written test’ in class. Basically the next class day after the papers are graded will be reserved for each student to answer a three/four question mini-test about their paper.

The idea behind this strategy is two-fold. First, for individuals who actually wrote their paper they should have a grasp of the knowledge that was required to formulate the ideas that produced the paper. If an individual did not write a paper, but instead acquired it from a paper mill there is a much smaller probability that the individual has enough of a grasp of knowledge to perform well on the test. Second, the point of education is to acquire established knowledge that can be used in the future not create ephemeral knowledge that disappears after a few weeks. Therefore, even if limiting plagiarism is not a goal the above strategy serves as a valuable purpose to advancing education, thus there is reason in doing it. One might argue that instructors do not have enough time to take such a strategy as it would waste class time which is limited as it is, but recall that this strategy is tied to large quality low volume grading thus only two to four class days will be used for the method. Note that these days are not ‘sacrificed’ because they do serve the purpose mentioned above.

A supplemental strategy for addressing plagiarism has been to utilize the online service www.turnitin.com. However, the service does cost a significant amount of money (thousands of dollars for a one year license for even medium sized schools (1,000 students)). With the omnipresence of budget problems for most public schools, amplified by the continued emergence of charter schools driven by unsupported positive bias, paying this additional sum for this private service may be more detrimental to students than beneficial in how school funds are distributed.

Another strategy for reducing plagiarism is to have students hand in rough drafts of their work a week before the due date for the assignment. Such a condition limits the opportunity for plagiarism because the instructor can see the development of thought and presentation in the rough draft and use that as marker of comparison against the final copy. If there are significant differences then the instructor can ask the student why he/she decided to go in such a radically different direction between the rough draft from a week ago and the final draft. An incoherent or insufficient explanation will typically only be given if work has been plagiarized. Finally to ensure proper boundary conditions there must be clear definitions of plagiarism given at the beginning of a class year along with clear consequences. Having students sign a ‘contract’ of sorts confirming that they have received and understood these ethical standard expectations would eliminate any ‘confusion’ regarding student comprehension.

The third and final type of cheating has actually emerged as significant only over the last decade. The increased importance of standardized testing has created an environment of additional pressure for some instructors who believe that the use of the standardized testing as an evaluation metric for schools and individual instructors is weighted inappropriately. This pressure has lead some to resort to cheating for their students, with some schools even having ‘answer correction parties’ for their instructors after the completion of a given standardized test. Clearly such behavior is inexcusable and precautions must be established to ensure that it no longer occurs.

While the best option would be to replace instructors with independent test auditors for national testing days, most school districts and/or states would not want nor typically even have money budgeted to pay for these individuals. Therefore, one option may be to ‘instructor swap’ where instructors from school A administer tests at school B and instructors from school B administer tests at school A. For most schools the logistics of such a temporary swap would not be difficult, but the swap itself raises an interesting psychological question among the instructors, a question similar in nature to that of the prisoners’ dilemma (PD).

In the swap scenario there are two compelling forces that may act upon the substituted instructors. The first force is the standard comrade support structure that exists in most occupations where Person A of occupation A looks out for Person B of occupation A and visa versa solely because they both have the same occupation. Therefore, the swapped instructors may not go out of their way to help another instructor that does not teach at their institution, but may ‘bend’ the rules a bit to assist in a positive manner.

The second force is the direct principle of the PD. While there may be a natural leaning towards helping a fellow instructor, that leaning is not guaranteed, especially in the same school districts with the weight of standardized tests on bonuses in a more evaluation heavy environment. In PD the best outcome is derived from the prisoners trusting each other and both admitting guilt; however, if one fails to follow through on this trust the consequences are disastrous for the individual that admits guilt. In the competitive environment that education ‘reformers’ are trying to craft among instructors if one instructor does not reciprocate assistance it will help him/her both in salary and job security. Therefore, this aspect of the PD may suppress any occupational equality bias.

Crafting appropriate punishments for cheating is tricky because the punishment must be severe enough that students have proper respect for ethics, but not so severe that it creates a self-catalyzing negative situation. Initially it can be argued that there is no such thing as a ‘too severe’ punishment for cheating (within the scope of common sense i.e. no death penalty, etc.) because cheating does not occur by accident, it is a willful and conscious occurrence. Factors like ‘family problems’ or ‘too much stress’ are frequently mitigated as rationalities because students that use them do not make instructors aware of the situation, thus it is viewed as a scapegoat or excuse not a negative trigger. Basically assigning any punishment severity to cheating is akin to giving a motorist a $2000 speeding ticket. Whether an individual exceeds the speed limit is entirely under the control of the individual (clearly stuck accelerators are not given valid speeding tickets, etc.).

While any punishment is justified from the standpoint of free action it may not be appropriate. There are larger issues to consider in that a single mistake should not create a situation that is ‘unrecoverable’. For example it can be argued that expelling a student for a single cheating event creates an undue burden on both the student and his/her family. However, just as there must be temperance in the first offence there must be the prospect of more significant punishment in the case of relapse. Therefore, one punishment option would be for a first-time cheating event to result in a zero for the given test/paper (as mentioned above) and a calendar year long probation period where further cheating will result in automatic failure of the class in which the second event occurred. In this punishment structure the student does not receive multiple ‘first-time’ event depending on the class, if the student cheats in class A then cheats in class B he/she automatically fails class B. In this system it must be recalled that cheating is a conscious choice.

Punishment for instructors changing student answers or other cheating is rather straightforward for as adults they should understand the consequences of such behavior. There should be no quarrel if an instructor is fired after committing such an act. One could even argue that such a penalty will not be misappropriated because high quality instructors will not need to cheat because a majority of their students will be able to perform at least adequately on the examinations, thus only low quality instructors will be driven to cheat. Granted the legitimacy of this conclusion is dependent on the influencing weight of standardized tests on instructor evaluation.

Overall while addressing the root causes of cheating would be ideal unfortunately such a strategy does not appear overly viable due to the psychological factors that embody those causes. Until society is willing to judge methodology as an important element to gained results, cheating will always be regarded as beneficial. Therefore, in order to ensure the importance of genuine understanding and accomplishment in lieu of fraudulent actions society must develop the mindset to detect and punish cheating. Education is one of the prime battlegrounds for morality. The battle against cheating is two-fold: ensuring that it is not a successful strategy and demonstrating the values of ethics and knowledge.