what is cheating?

[fakename]

I’ve come to realize that I don’t know exactly what this means. For instance, if someone is unjustly compelled to do something is it cheating to employ subterfuge to circumvent it? If a student doesn’t think his work is important, and say he already knows the answers to it, is it cheating for him to “farm-out” his work to others since 1) he already attains to the ends provided by the work, 2) he has conceivably more important things to do, 3) his aim is not to get the answers for free, but rather he is not really aiming to do the work at all?

 

[Pug]

You mentioned a student. Students belong to schools, universities, and the like. Those sorts of places have “codes of conduct” or “disciplinary procedures” or whatever they call them these days. What constitutes “cheating” will be spelled out, along with an administrative procedure that must be followed if cheating is discovered.

In general, I think it is reasonable for a place to set a list of requirements that you must meet before they will accept or certify you. They are not required to certify whomever, whenever.

 

[Elijah_Baley]

I’ve come to realize that I don’t know exactly what this means.

Be careful to discern what motives are at work here, and whether the voice which always tells you what you want to hear is speaking. This voice will only speak the truth if it can thereby deceive you.

“Morality is always dreadfully complicated to a man who has lost all his principles.”

• G.K. Chesterton

Find again your principles, root yourself in Christ, and morality will be clearer.

For instance, if someone is unjustly compelled to do something is it cheating to employ subterfuge to circumvent it?

This is too general to be answered properly. I will not list extreme examples of yes because they are far removed from what is presumably your reality. I don’t want you to clever yourself into believing that what is clearly wrong is right.

If a student doesn’t think his work is important, and say he already knows the answers to it, is it cheating for him to “farm-out” his work to others since 1) he already attains to the ends provided by the work, 2) he has conceivably more important things to do, 3) his aim is not to get the answers for free, but rather he is not really aiming to do the work at all?

His name appears on this work? And it is not his work? Then it is dishonest, and almost certainly a mortal sin.

 

[Reservoir_Dog]

I’ve come to realize that I don’t know exactly what [cheating] means…

If you’re in college and you still have to ask that question, you’re going to find life in the real world unsatisfying and difficult until you figure it out. There are many professions and business relationships where gross dishonesty will get you blackballed, informally or otherwise.

 

[DPMartin]

I’ve come to realize that I don’t know exactly what this means. For instance, if someone is unjustly compelled to do something is it cheating to employ subterfuge to circumvent it? If a student doesn’t think his work is important, and say he already knows the answers to it, is it cheating for him to “farm-out” his work to others since 1) he already attains to the ends provided by the work, 2) he has conceivably more important things to do, 3) his aim is not to get the answers for free, but rather he is not really aiming to do the work at all?

fakename

If you expect justice at the hand of man then you will fear what men know, and be confidant, if they don’t know.

If you expect justice at the Hand of God, then you will fear what He knows, and seek His Mercy and Forgiveness.

If you honestly believe your case has merit, then set your petition before the Lord, asking His Mercy and forgiveness knowing that He knows your heart on the matter. Hence fearing the Lord your God trusting He will give you His Wisdom on this. For fearing the Lord your God is the beginning of Knowledge, and the beginning of Understanding, that is of God.

 

[PatriceA]

I’ve come to realize that I don’t know exactly what this means. For instance, if someone is unjustly compelled to do something is it cheating to employ subterfuge to circumvent it? If a student doesn’t think his work is important, and say he already knows the answers to it, is it cheating for him to “farm-out” his work to others since 1) he already attains to the ends provided by the work, 2) he has conceivably more important things to do, 3) his aim is not to get the answers for free, but rather he is not really aiming to do the work at all?

Anytime you are asked to do any work or project and you don’t give credit for anyone else doing even a small portion of the job or project, you are cheating. In this case, if you can’t give credit to the people that actually did the work, you are cheating. I hire you for a job, or I am your teacher and I give you a project to do, I expect YOU to do it unless you inform me that others will be doing a part of the job or project. I didn’t hire X, Z and Y to do the job, I can not give a grade to A,B, and C for the project. At the end of the day, your name is on my payroll, or on my gradebook.

If this is a real situation, and you are working towards a college degree, you need to seriously reconsider your actions. If I hire you for the degree you have earned, and I later learned you really didn’t do the work, I would have serious concerns about keeping you on my payroll.

 

[John21652]

Their are different forms of cheating.

You can cheat others, or you can cheat yourself.
Stealing is also cheating.
Lieing is cheating.
Pretending is cheating.

Take the student who ‘farms out’ his work. Who is he/she cheating?
If he’/she circumvents an institutions rules, he/she is cheating the institution. He/she is also cheating on the expectations of the institution and the expectations of the other students, who must perform certain tasks to obtain a grade as required by the institution.
That student is also cheating him/herself by not abiding by the requirements which are designed to teach the student not just the knowledge, but also the discipline to meet certain standards of actually doing the work. Gaining a grade without doing the required work is also stealing.

Cheating others means dissapointing the expectations of others. Cheating oneself means denying oneself the opportunity to grow as a person, to obtain personal discipline and to meet a standard of achievement and honesty that one can feel proud of. To cheat oneself also means not admitting to yourself that you have taken shortcuts that will undermine your personal growth and sense of responsibility. If this occurs then you will find it hard to meet the expectations of others.

Cheating is the same as lieing. It destroys certainty between people, which is the basis of a stable and proper functioning society.It makes a cheat an unreliable person with whom others will eventually refuse to trust. Once the bonds of trust are broken, social alienation will occur. social cohesion is lost. Suspicion rises between people. The cheat must learn how to discipline him/herself so that others can trust him/her in social dealings. Cheating hurts other people, whether the cheating is verbal, or physical and others will eventually learn to avoid the possibility of being hut by the cheater. It is to invite social exclusion and the social exclusion will destroy that persons happiness.

It is better to learn that cheating has consequences before cheating becomes a personal habit. A person who is honest with him/herself accepts responsibility for thei actions and continually strives to be a reliable person in whom others will have confidence in all social dealings. The honest person cultivates and practices an ideal of trustworthyness, which is also called Fidelity. That’s a word anyone who would regard Integrity in others as something worthwhile, something to be emulated, should look up and understand, so they can cultivate it in themselves. The cheat has no integrity and possesses no fidelity.

 

[Gift_from_God]

On a quiz I wrote some time ago, I saw people looking on others paper. To me, that’s cheating

 

[fakename]

So more questions:

I’m assuming that cheating means to do anything against an institution/person’s rules as long as that person/institute trusts you to follow its rules.

But either “anything” is literal and everything including an unjust rule is something that can’t be cheated or shirked. In which case there must be some way to avoid said injustice ahead of time before it happens to avoid cheating.

Or “anything” is not literal in which case there are cases,where you have carry out something wrong that is, to cheat them?

And finally, I suppose that you can’t shirk your work or “blow-off” an institution because you think that the said work or institute is useless?

 

[DPMartin]

So more questions:

I’m assuming that cheating means to do anything against an institution/person’s rules as long as that person/institute trusts you to follow its rules.

But either “anything” is literal and everything including an unjust rule is something that can’t be cheated or shirked. In which case there must be some way to avoid said injustice ahead of time before it happens to avoid cheating.

Or “anything” is not literal in which case there are cases,where you have carry out something wrong that is, to cheat them?

And finally, I suppose that you can’t shirk your work or “blow-off” an institution because you think that the said work or institute is useless?

fakename

No.

If you come into an agreement of, this for that, then if you are able and do not after coming into agreement without setting down with whom you have come into agreement with and let us say, renegotiate the agreement, then your action is unethical. If you are unable to fulfill your part of the agreement one should also renegotiate that also, if possible.

But if you are in a agreement you are in the agreement till it is fulfilled, or is defaulted by one and forgiven or terminated by the other not at fault. Or come into agreement with the agreed to terminate the agreement.

If you read the story of Jacob, a lot of what he experienced was about agreements. From the bowl of lentil, for Esau’s birth right, on.

 

[Elijah_Baley]

But either “anything” is literal and everything including an unjust rule is something that can’t be cheated or shirked. In which case there must be some way to avoid said injustice ahead of time before it happens to avoid cheating.

You’re clevering your way out of it, again. Name an unjust rule regarding cheating and we’ll talk, but I don’t think there’s a single example behind your hypothetical.

 

[Pug]

So more questions:

You mention “injustice” within this post about shirking work. II will make two scenarios, one to cover each word.

A) Your employer wants you to use disinfectant on the counters at the end of the shift every day no matter what. You look at the counters today and realize no one has touched them today during the shift. So you omit the wipedown. This is shirking.

B) Your employer regularly wants you to pad the bill to the customers with extra charges for work that was not done. You realize this is an injustice to the customer, so you don’t want to do that. Here you are in a pickle, and you may have to change your employer’s mind somehow or quit.

 

[fakename]

OK, so far I’ve had good responses but I just want to make sure that this is a general law:

you can’t cheat (go back on a promise or oath) even if that oath is inimical or inefficient at getting towards the end for which it was entered?

But secondly,

About the “immoral oath scenario” I’m pretty sure that oaths and promises aren’t promises or oaths if they are contracted for immoral purposes so it would not be cheating to go around these. At least that’s what I read about contracts in the Catholic Encyclopedia under article “contracts”.

Thanks for the responses

 

[fakename]

OK, so far I’ve had good responses but I just want to make sure that this is a general law:

you can’t cheat (go back on a promise or oath) even if that oath is inimical or inefficient at getting towards the end for which it was entered?

But secondly,

About the “immoral oath scenario” I’m pretty sure that oaths and promises aren’t promises or oaths if they are contracted for immoral purposes so it would not be cheating to go around these. At least that’s what I read about contracts in the Catholic Encyclopedia under article “contracts”.

Thanks for the responses

 

[Pug]

OK, so far I’ve had good responses but I just want to make sure that this is a general law:

you can’t cheat (go back on a promise or oath) even if that oath is inimical or inefficient at getting towards the end for which it was entered?

Depends on what you mean. Some promises do have clauses, even if unspoken. Say you promise to meet someone at the airport to bring them home. Depending on how the promise went, you may be released if some other mechanism for getting brought home comes to light. That sort of thing can depend on circumstances and previous conversations and expectations (unspoken clauses).

I’m not sure unspoken clauses is what you have in mind, though.

But secondly,

About the “immoral oath scenario” I’m pretty sure that oaths and promises aren’t promises or oaths if they are contracted for immoral purposes so it would not be cheating to go around these. At least that’s what I read about contracts in the Catholic Encyclopedia under article “contracts”.

You are not bound to a promise that requires you to do something immoral to fulfill it. If you realize that the only way you can keep a promise is to do an evil, you do not have to keep the promise. You ought not keep the promise.

 

[Lost_Sheep]

If you have to ask, then you are probably doing it.

 

[Reservoir_Dog]

OK, so far I’ve had good responses but I just want to make sure that this is a general law:

you can’t cheat (go back on a promise or oath) even if that oath is inimical or inefficient at getting towards the end for which it was entered?

If I, as your boss, tell you to do something, its not your concern about whether its inimical or inefficient. When its my signature on the document and I take final responsibility for mistakes, its going to be a good as humanly possible, and if that means junior staff is given mindnumbingly boring projects, they’d better do it.

But secondly,

About the “immoral oath scenario” I’m pretty sure that oaths and promises aren’t promises or oaths if they are contracted for immoral purposes so it would not be cheating to go around these. At least that’s what I read about contracts in the Catholic Encyclopedia under article “contracts”.

Thanks for the responses

I don’t require staff to do anything unprofessional or unethical, and if anyone has any concerns about a job, they can always ask for clarification.

The one thing I will not tolerate is someone doing something behind my back, good reason, bad reason or no reason.

 

[John21652]

http://www.blindloop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cheating-partners.jpg

 

[The_Word]

I’ve come to realize that I don’t know exactly what this means. For instance, if someone is unjustly compelled to do something is it cheating to employ subterfuge to circumvent it? If a student doesn’t think his work is important, and say he already knows the answers to it, is it cheating for him to “farm-out” his work to others since 1) he already attains to the ends provided by the work, 2) he has conceivably more important things to do, 3) his aim is not to get the answers for free, but rather he is not really aiming to do the work at all?

Cheating is an action that comes from the genetic sins of greed, jealousy, envy, gluttony, etc. Our flesh is loaded with sin traits that give power to deceive the thoughts we were created with so a greedy man will do whatever he can to make more money. This is what we call cheating. Someone who is envious about another man’s success will cheat to be like him. There’s an endless list of sinful reasons to cheat.

 

[fakename]

This thread has been gone for awhile but I want to suggest a definition of cheating since I can’t find one in any moral theology book I’ve seen.

I think that perhaps, cheating is not itself a sin but is a word that applies to many sins: theft and lying being the main two.

I can’t see however how cheating could be an actual sin since the instances of cheating -like doing someone else’s homework doesn’t seem necessarily wrong the only thing that is wrong is the fact that one intends to deceive and two, the teacher is deceived but those are really extrinsic factors.

Any additions?