Philosophy
The less short of the short people has begun studying the clarinet. In learning a small piece of Haydn's Surprise Symphony, her teacher was surprised when she added her own ending beyond the piece she was given to work on. Sensing (quite correctly) that the short person would be motivated to play by being given the opportunity to be creative, the teacher asked her to bring in her own composition the next week.
Taking this assignment very seriously, she began to work on her initial opus. she began with the notes at the end of the first line of Mary Had a Little Lamb, put them at the front of the line and worked from there. TheWife expressed some unease about her appropriating the work of another song for her own piece, but I quickly said that this is a standard practice among composers of serious music who regularly work on variations of a theme from another piece or base works on beloved Hungarian folk songs.
The question is whether this is in fact the sincerest form of flattery or theft. You can't quote in music the way you can in essays. Surely there is a line that distinguishes stealing someone else's ideas and using their work as inspiration and a springboard to a new creative place. The question is how we draw that line. The shorty seems safe, but how far could she push it?
- Universalizing Art And Constricting Philosophy
Gwydion asks, Are there any objective, universal assertions that can be truthfully and correctly made about the nature of creative endeavors (writing, for example, or painting) for all creative practitioners? In other words, is there anything that is...
- Plagiarism And Language
Guest-post from Michael Schmidt today: The ethics of plagiarism have been crossing my computer screen a lot, lately. On August 9, Stanley Fish wrote on opinion piece in the New York Times stating that plagiarism ?is not a big moral deal.? The rules of...
- Would This Be Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the theft of intellectual property. If you take the ideas or worse the words of someone else's published work and include it in yours, you've got a case of plagiarism. But here's an interesting twist. Suppose the idea was yours...
- What Can Be Taught?
Strange that we don't ask this question before we begin to teach, but what is it that can be taught? Skills can be taught. That seems uncontroversial. But what else? As a teacher of critical thinking, can people be taught to be rational? As an ethics...
- When Do You Join The Linguistic Community?
So one of the shorties was relaying with some agitation being told by a classmate that she was being rude when she was in fact being creative with no ill intent at all. She and a friend had developed a secret handshake of their own. They had seen others...
Philosophy
Plagiarism and Music
The less short of the short people has begun studying the clarinet. In learning a small piece of Haydn's Surprise Symphony, her teacher was surprised when she added her own ending beyond the piece she was given to work on. Sensing (quite correctly) that the short person would be motivated to play by being given the opportunity to be creative, the teacher asked her to bring in her own composition the next week.
Taking this assignment very seriously, she began to work on her initial opus. she began with the notes at the end of the first line of Mary Had a Little Lamb, put them at the front of the line and worked from there. TheWife expressed some unease about her appropriating the work of another song for her own piece, but I quickly said that this is a standard practice among composers of serious music who regularly work on variations of a theme from another piece or base works on beloved Hungarian folk songs.
The question is whether this is in fact the sincerest form of flattery or theft. You can't quote in music the way you can in essays. Surely there is a line that distinguishes stealing someone else's ideas and using their work as inspiration and a springboard to a new creative place. The question is how we draw that line. The shorty seems safe, but how far could she push it?
- Universalizing Art And Constricting Philosophy
Gwydion asks, Are there any objective, universal assertions that can be truthfully and correctly made about the nature of creative endeavors (writing, for example, or painting) for all creative practitioners? In other words, is there anything that is...
- Plagiarism And Language
Guest-post from Michael Schmidt today: The ethics of plagiarism have been crossing my computer screen a lot, lately. On August 9, Stanley Fish wrote on opinion piece in the New York Times stating that plagiarism ?is not a big moral deal.? The rules of...
- Would This Be Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the theft of intellectual property. If you take the ideas or worse the words of someone else's published work and include it in yours, you've got a case of plagiarism. But here's an interesting twist. Suppose the idea was yours...
- What Can Be Taught?
Strange that we don't ask this question before we begin to teach, but what is it that can be taught? Skills can be taught. That seems uncontroversial. But what else? As a teacher of critical thinking, can people be taught to be rational? As an ethics...
- When Do You Join The Linguistic Community?
So one of the shorties was relaying with some agitation being told by a classmate that she was being rude when she was in fact being creative with no ill intent at all. She and a friend had developed a secret handshake of their own. They had seen others...