#18 - Professor Hartley's new book on moral philosophy

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Assumption. The correct answer choice is (D)

The first sentence of the stimulus is a premise supporting the second sentence, which is the conclusion. Based upon the premise that Hartley’s book contains numerous unattributed verbatim passages from an earlier work by Professor Johnson, the author of the stimulus concludes that Hartley owes an intellectual debt to Johnson and has been dishonest in not acknowledging that debt. The stimulus assumes that the first work published is in fact the originative source of the passages. Look for an answer that represents this assumption.

Answer Choice (A): The stimulus does not go so far as to suggest that Hartley would have been unable to write the book without the passages in question, only that utilizing them without acknowledgement was dishonest.

Answer Choice (B): The conclusion reached in the stimulus does not depend upon Hartley having had access to the manuscript of Lawrence’s book. For example, as Lawrence’s earlier work was in fact published, Hartley could feasibly have accessed the passages in question by means other than the manuscript itself in order to use them in the dishonest manner described in the stimulus.

Answer Choice (C): The stimulus does not suggest that a book on moral philosophy should contain only material representing the author’s own convictions, only that to include material representing the convictions of others without attribution is dishonest.

Answer Choice (D):This is the correct answer choice. For the conclusion in the stimulus to be properly drawn, it must be the case that Hartley was not the original source of the passages in question. If Lawrence did in fact originally obtain the ideas or formulations for the passages in question from Hartley, then it is Hartley who is the original source of these passages despite the fact that Lawrence was the first to publish them. That being the case, Hartley would not owe an intellectual debt to Lawrence.

Answer Choice (E): Whether or not Hartley considered the passages in question to be the best possible expressions of their ideas is irrelevant to the original argument. The argument asserts that Hartley dishonestly utilized the passages. Whether Hartley considered those passages to be the best possible expressions of the ideas, the worst, or somewhere in between does not change the dishonesty in failing to acknowledge their original source.

[jenna_d]

Hello,

I'm unsure about this question. I chose B because when I performed the assumption negation technique, it seemed to fit the bill. I am not sure how we would know more about the relationship between Hartley and Lawrence (which we might need for answer D) and thus, how could we be led to believe that D is the correct answer? Thank you!

[AthenaDalton]

Hi Jenna,

Thanks for your question!

The author in the stimulus is arguing that Hartley plagiarized Lawrence's work since Hartley's book includes passages that appeared in Lawrence's earlier-published book.

For this plagiarism argument to hold up, we need to know that Lawrence was the one who first came up with the ideas, and that Hartley then stole those ideas. For a charge of plagiarism to hold up, these three steps have to occur in this order:

1. Lawrence writes about an original idea, Idea L
2. Hartley reads Lawrence's idea
3. Hartley publishes Idea L in his own book without attribution, claiming that the idea was actually his own

Answer choice (B) fails to provide this link for a few reasons. First, to prove plagiarism we don't need to know that Hartley had "a manuscript" of Lawrence's book. Hartley could have plagiarized Lawrence's ideas in any number of ways, such as buying an actual copy of the book (as opposed to a manuscript), or copying passages of Lawrence's writings that were published elsewhere (such as an academic paper).

Answer choice (D), by contrast, does provide the essential link the author needs to prove plagiarism. Answer choice (D) tells us that Lawrence did not, in fact, steal Hartley's ideas. This answer choice assures us that Lawrence did publish an original idea which Hartley then stole.

If we negate answer choice (D), we would get a scenario where Lawrence first stole his ideas from Hartley. Here's what that would look like:

1. Hartley publishes an original idea, Idea H
2. Lawrence reads Hartley's paper and includes Idea H in his own book without attribution
3. Hartley later includes Idea H in his own book

In this case (the negated answer), Hartley isn't plagiarizing Lawrence, he's just publishing his own work. So if this were the case, Hartley wouldn't be plagiarizing at all -- he would be the victim of Lawrence's plagiarizing.

I hope that helps clarify things for you. Good luck studying!

Athena Dalton