I feel like I’ve walked through the looking glass here. Yes, “As has been pointed out, it’s not theft, it’s fraud.” Indeed.  *I* pointed that out. This has been my entire point from the beginning and it is totally bizarre to find myself taken to task for saying the exact opposite of what I actually said. I quote myself from above “But surely that’s just garden variety fraud.”

Copying oneself without attribution is not plagiarism. It is fraud. You can think if it as theft if you want (I do) but I’m not insisting on that. What I am insisting on, since my first post above (read them if you don’t believe me) is that plagiarism necessarily involves using *someone elses* words. If there isn’t a second person involved, it isn’t plagiarism. Consequently, self-plagiarism doesn’t exist.

You said  “We have a word for this: plagiarism.” No, that word doesn’t go with that act. That is what Kant called a category error. Plagiarism means copying someone else, not copying one’s self.

I give up. It was a small point to begin with and isn’t worth all this effort. I’m going to stick to making jokes from now on. Everyone as you were.

Words mean what they mean and not something else.

And yet you continue to insist on your own personal definition. You keep calling it theft despite your own dictionary quotes not using that word. As has been pointed out, it’s not theft, it’s fraud.

No, it’s not. That’s the point. Plagiarism involves using the work of SOMEONE ELSE without attribution. If you recycle your own work, attributions or no, that is not plagiarism. Read the dictionary. God, I didn’t think this would generate such a dispute! Words mean what they mean and not something else. Passing off your own thinking as your own is surely a different category of error than passing of someone else’s thinking as your own.

Plagiarism is publishing work without proper attributions. If you publish your own, older work, without the proper attributions/citations, it is plagiarism. The difference is that rather than mistaking your work for someone else’s, people will mistake your old work for your new work. Plagiarism is more akin to fraud than to theft.

Plagarism IS a form of theft. That’s the only point I was making. According to Mr. Webster plagiarism means:

VERB:
tr.
1. To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one’s own. 2. To appropriate for use as one’s own passages or ideas from (another).
VERB:
intr.
To put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another.

Since the ideas and words came from himself, and not from another person, whatever he did cannot properly be called plagiarism.

You can’t steal something that belongs to you.

That’s why he’s not being accused of stealing his own work. We have a word for this: plagiarism. You’ve equated plagiarism with theft and then made your argument based on that definition.

Folks like this are my #1 pet peeve in the whole world. I can deal with people who have some degree of self-awareness when they lie.

Edit: This should have been a reply to @Brainspore.

lehrer’s career is fucked sideways and he doesn’t even seem to know it.

I think that a big part of the backlash can be explained by this: “(it had felt good to say the City of Angels had a resident big thinker, its own Malcolm Gladwell)”. Gladwell isn’t necessarily regarded that well by everyone, either. Counter-intuitive bullshitting (to use Coates’ phrase) is a fairly slender reed to build an entire career on, at best.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/189670/how-many-journalists-directly-contacted-jonah-lehrer-about-fabrication-plagiarism-accusations/