The paper “Perception and Belief” on C. Long’s profile was actually written by A. D. Smith and does appear in PPR in in volume 62 issue 2 (not issue 3). (Of course, it was also not titled “Perception and Beliej”.)

It looks as though the PhilPapers profile is a result of bad data collection: if you click on the green link for the paper, it takes you to a picture of a page from the Review of Metaphysics where they list all current journal articles (I suppose this was a useful service at some point.) just below the entry for the Smith article is one for an article by Dorit Bar-On and Douglas C. Long. But the fragment ‘C. Long’ appears on a separate line.

as to the philpaper there’s apparently a mistake in between. the link provided here obviously take you somewhere related to phenomenology magazine and the mentioned name. But actually what does matter here is the definition of plagiarism. If using someone else’s sentence is plagiarism we may find so many elsewhere in MA students’ dissertation. But regarding Dr Khatemi what is important now is to hear his defence and see if there’s any justification in what he says for using complete large sentences from other sources without mentioning them.

The true lesson to be learned here is that the only way for philosophers to get others to not only read their work, but read it *very closely*, is to get caught plagiarizing.

But then the work being read closely is, by hypothesis, not yours. Really, your only hope seems to be that someone else is caught plagiarizing you.

Hi Justin,

Thanks for bringing Khatami’s plagiarism to light. This news is now circulating in the Iranian social media and will bring this guy a lot of shame. I, as an Iranian, stand by truth not nationality and I am sure many other Iranians feel the same.

“Really, your only hope seems to be that someone else is caught plagiarizing you.”

Or start a false rumor that you’ve plagiarized, so it has to be confirmed through close analysis.

There’s an ongoing effort to eliminate the part of Khatami’s wikipedia entry that concerns his plagiarism: see the history of the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mahmoud_Khatami&action=history

The anonymous authors of the statement said that Khatami had plagiarized from many books (that they mentioned). In the statement they only talked about two instances of plagiarism taken from Hawi’s book. I just checked one other book they mentioned (namely, The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy) to see how much Khatami has taken from that book. Here is the result:
Khatami’s dissertation from p.140 to p.153 is copied from The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy p.28-p.50.
Here I mention the first paragraph in p.140 where Khatami begins to copying from of the book (p.28). Khatami continues copying until p.153. I also mention the last paragraph where Khatami stops copying from the book (this corresponds to p.50 of the book)

Khatami (plagaisims from the book begins):

p. 140
In the analysis of the theory of reflective knowledge the term “subject,” Sadra says,(5) signifies the mind that performs the act of reflective knowledge by knowing something, just as the term “object” means the thing or the proposition known by that subject. But, since in a proposition known there is always something involved, particular or universal, it is true then to say that the object of reflective knowledge is always what we call the thing known. It is also observed that the relation called “knowing” is constituted by the mind (as the subject) associated with the thing (as the object); the subject and the object, then, can be called the constituents of the unity of reflective knowledge.

Khatami (plagiarism from the book ends by this paragraph):
p.153
By virtue of the correspondence it contains through its objective reference, reflective knowledge possesses the “aptitude” for being true, therefore it may conceivably fail to meet this condition and as a result become false. But this aptitude does not hold in the unitary consciousness, for in this, since it has nothing to do with correspondence, there is no possibility of its being false; thus it is not eligible for falsity (see, above, eh. 5). As the nature of this opposition stands, if there is no susceptibility to falsity, there is no meaning for truth either. Thus, the dualism of truth and falsehood only holds in an appropriate opposition in which the possibility of one opposite is the logical standard for the possibility of the other. The impossibility of one also counts as the criterion of the modal impossibility of the other

The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy p.28:
In the analysis of the theory of reflective knowledge the term “subject signifies the mind that performs the act of knowledge by knowing something, just as the term “object” refers the thing or the proposition known by that subject. However, since in a proposition known there is always something involved, be it particular or universal, it is consequently true then to say that the object of knowledge is always what we call the thing known. It is also observed that the relation called knowing is constituted by the mind as the subject associated with the thing as the object, both of which are knitted into one complex whole, the subject and the objectare to be called the constituents of the unity of knowledge.

The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy p.50
By virtue of the correspondence that the knowledge by correspondence contains through its objective reference, reflective knowledge possesses the aptitude for being true. Therefore it may conceivably fail to meet this condition and as a result become false. But this aptitude does not hold in knowledge by presence, for this kind of knowledge, since it has nothing to do with correspondence, there is no possibility of its being false; thus it is not eligible for falsity. As the nature of this opposition stands, if there is no susceptibility to falsity, there is no meaning for truth either. Thus, the dualism of truth and falsehood only holds in an appropriate opposition in which the possibility of one opposite is the logical standard for the possibility of the other. The impossibility of one also counts as the criterion of the modal impossibility of the other

As further evidence of his plagiarism, see also this article:
Mahmoud Khatami, On the Illuminative Approach to Imaginal Power : Outline of a Perspective, Topoi (2007) 26:221–22. p 225:
«Consequently, from a Sadraean point of view, a theory of meaning must begin by describing an existential plane of the imaginal faculty by which presence to the world is realized reflectively and in which there is manifested an ability to read directly the meaning borne by the object— that is, in living it without having to decipher or explicate a duality. This theory should beware of the convenient and dangerous notion of ‘‘representation,’’ (tamassul), which results from the notion of a closed consciousness. To penetrate the palace of consciousness, the thing would have to undergo a metamorphosis in order to be presented to us. Representation would then be an event which occurs inside the subject and to which the object is admitted—like a private spectacle within closed doors which consciousness furnishes to itself with the means at hand, namely, the images registered by memory and stored in the unconscious, and the innate ideas which are also interior to the subject.»
Now compare it with this book:
Dufrenne, Mikel, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (1973) p 336 :
«Consequently, a theory of meaning must begin by describing an existential plane of perception in which presence to the world is realized and in which there is manifested an ability to read directly the meaning borne by the object-that is, in living it without having to decipher or explicate a duality. This theory should beware of the convenient and dangerous notion of ”representation” which results from the notion of a closed consciousness. To penetrate the palace of consciousness, the thing would have to undergo a metamorphosis in order to be presented to us. Representation would then be an event which occurs inside one’s mind and to which the object is admitted-like a private spectacle within closed doors which consciousness furnishes to itself with the means at hand, namely, the images registered by memory and stored in the unconscious, and the innate ideas which are also interior to the mind»

A case of plagiarism by Mahmoud Khatami from an author who is alive:

Mahmoud Khatami, “The Mystical Rhizome : Towards a Transcendent Concept of Technology”, FALSAFEH (2008), 36/3: 171-195
This paper is available online at:
http://www.ensani.ir/fa/content/212467/default.aspx

Almost the whole paper is taken from an essay publishen in 2003:
Thomas A. Carlson, “Locating the Mystical Subject,” in Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard, eds. Mystics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Thomas Carlson’s essay is available online here:
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/projects/ct3/docs/LocatingtheMysticalSubject.doc

What is interesting in Khatami’s paper is that he replaces the name of Eriugena with that of Ibn Arabi and, even more interestingly, he ascribes excerpts from Eriugena to Ibn Arabi.

Thomas Carlson, p. 217:
Eriugena wants to insist not only that the human cannot comprehend God, nor even simply that the human created in the image of the incomprehensible God is itself incomprehensible–but also, in full consistency with these first two principles, that even God finally cannot comprehend himself. In light of such thoroughgoing divine ignorance Eriugena can insist that “the human mind is more honored in its ignorance than in its knowledge” (P, IV, 771C)–for in that ignorance above all the image of the divine in the human achieves its perfection. And so it is that “the ignorance in it of what it is is more praiseworthy than the knowledge that it is, just as the negation of God accords better with the praise of His nature than the affirmation…” (P, IV, 771C).

Mahmoud Khatami, p. 181:
Ibn Arabi wants to insist not only that the human cannot comprehend God, nor even simply that the human created in the image of the incomprehensible God is itself incomprehensible–but also, in full consistency with these first two principles, that even God finally cannot comprehend himself. In light of such thoroughgoing divine ignorance Ibn Arabi can insist that “the human mind is more honored in its ignorance than in its knowledge” (Ibn Arabi, I, 126)–for in that ignorance above all the image of the divine in the human achieves its perfection. And so it is that “the ignorance in it of what it is is more praiseworthy than the knowledge that it is, just as the negation of God accords better with the praise of His nature than the affirmation…” (Ibid, 288-9).

Later, Thomas Carlson uses this essay in his book: The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human (2008), and writes in acknowledgements that: “Portions of chapter 3 have appeared previously in “Locating the Mystical Subject,” in Mystics, ed. Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003),”

Mahmoud Khatami, on the other hand, goes on to plagiarize extensively from, once again, Carlson’s writing in another work:
Mahmoud Khatami, “The Illuminative Notion of Man in Persian Thought: A Response to an Original Quest”, in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed. Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Penomenology on the Peennial Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm, Springer, 2006.

Just for an instance let’s look at the same paragraph in this book.
p. 231:
The human cannot comprehend God, nor is it even simply that the human being created in the image of the incomprehensible God, is itself incomprehensible. It is in light of such thoroughgoing divine ignorance that “the human mind is more honored in its ignorance than in its knowledge”, for in that ignorance above all the image of the divine in the human achieves its perfection. And so it is that “the ignorance in it of what it is is more praiseworthy than the knowledge that it is”.

OK ! My theory about the dead plagiarized society got disapproved !

I am the current Editor-in-Chief of Topoi. Having just received a private message about Prof. Khatami’s plagiarism in his article on Topoi, I immediately took action, and can now confirm that the author is indeed guilty of extensively copying, almost verbatim, large parts of Prof. Dufrenne’s book, without signaling that he is quoting someone else, nor including the book in his list of references. The fact that the incident did not happen on my watch (I became EiC in 2012) is immaterial to me: what is worst in plagiarism is not the violation of the original authors’ right to be properly acknowledged (although that’s bad enough), but rather the breach in the mutual trust academics have (and should continue to have) in each other. We want peer reviewing to be as rigorous as possible, but we also know very well (as reviewers of an increasing number of papers) that our resources are limited. Thus we want to be free of focusing our attention on matters of content, not on policing sentence by sentence whether the author is plagiarizing someone else – where “someone else” could be any published material in the history of philosophy, no less. Trust is needed for the system to work, and people like Prof. Khatami abuse this trust. So, while the journal will take full responsibility for the incident, we will also do our best to punish the culprit as far as it is in our powers to do so. The collective construction of knowledge is a public good, and as any public good it is vulnerable to cheaters. Cheater-detection mechanisms are in place, but they are far from perfect, and necessarily so. So we must complement ex ante cheater-detection with ex post punishment of cheaters, once their misdeeds come to light. Appropriate action will be taken over the next few weeks at Topoi. In the meantime, I would like to thank this blog, Prof. Weinberg and all contributors for helping to reveal this incident: it was a virtuous application of the “many eyes principle”, and a valuable service to the whole profession.

Two publishers removed two papers of Khatami from their journal and book.

The statement of Organon F:
http://www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/organon/?q=en/content/epistemological-quest-possibility-experience-possibility-communication

Zetabooks also removed Khatami’s paper from their collection for “causes of ethical misconduct” (the paper originally was the paper #12)
http://www.zetabooks.com/index.php/books/post-scriptum-opo/selected-essays-from-euro-mediterranean-phenomenology-2005-vol-3-part-i-book.html

The plagiarism was caught by a young researcher and student at University of Colorado at Boulder, Wisam Alshaibi, who alerted Jeremy Carrette, the world’s most distinguished scholar on Foucault and spirituality. For over a decade, Mahmoud Khatami’s work was cited and studied, until Alshaibi made the connection when doing research on Foucault in Iran. Unbelievable.

Some grand figures in Western academia have plagiarized:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17198_5-great-men-who-built-their-careers-plagiarism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_plagiarism_in_the_United_States

Did Nietzsche plagiarize Stirner?
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/9609/did-nietzsche-plagiarize-stirner

Wittgenstein a plagerist:
http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Phil467/WittViva.pdf

Marxist Philosophy Superstar Slavoj Žižek Plagiarized:
http://www.newsweek.com/did-marxist-philosophy-superstar-slavoj-zizek-plagiarize-white-nationalist-journal-258433

It is not that Khatami plagiarized others. It is that they plagiarized him. They thought that they could get away with it because of the common assumption that no Iranian could be the intellectual equal of a Westerner. Well, Khatami is BETTER than his rivals. A shame that a colonialist and imperialist mentality still pervades academia.

Robert Segal
University of Aberdeen

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” — Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein – Plagiarist of The Century:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_einstein.htm
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=13400
http://www.italiansrus.com/articles/emc2.htm
http://www.amazon.ca/Albert-Einstein-The-Incorrigible-Plagiarist/dp/0971962987

It would be grand if you could stop posting comments that plagiarism is OK because other people do it. Original plagiarism is bad enough, but the last thing we need is an outbreak of copycat plagiarism. Thanks.