Plagiarism: The philosophy, psychology and biology of why we don’t see eye to eye.

👯 Why is agreeing on what we see so hard?

“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.” John Berger

Plagiarism might be the single most despicable practice in the creative industry. It’s both considered terrible practice from an artistic integrity perspective, but also considered by many as an economic theft. Yet, plagiarism is rife, and often goes unnoticed or unpunished. The reasons are multiple, from the power imbalance between companies and freelance artists, the technological opacity of machine learning models, or simply the mere complexity of agreeing on whether something is a copy or not. In the past year, plagiarism cases have been numerous, from AI mediated copies to design agencies copying other design agencies. Illustrators often seem at a loss when it comes to defend their work from such practices, and their voices are often suppressed, and their input trivialized in conversations between bigger fishes.

Our perception of images is shaped by two opposite yet complementary forces, difference, and similarity. Difference motivates artists to experiment, try new things, become original, perform uniqueness. It also plays a role in granting copyright protection to their work and trademark protection to the brand their contribute to. Difference is, in other words, a form of capital highly valued in our industry. In the negative space of that celebrated difference, we can see the outline of another force, similarity. Arguably less desired, similarity is just as important for creativity. It creates recognition, constancy, and connections between images and people. Without similarity, it would be impossible to make sense of an artist’s “body of work”, and therefore of their artistic identity. This is a very binary account of the relationship of these forces, and in reality, both are constantly present in dynamic tension in our assessment of the things we encounter.

It might seem odd to reduce plagiarism to similarity and difference, but bear with me. I’ve really struggled writing about this topic because I started to write about specific cases of plagiarism, from Jay Cover’ and GoodSide Studio’s recent series of posts on Instagram and Twitter, to Sarah Mazzetti ongoing quarrel with Franz Lang. It became obvious that looking at plagiarism would be a tricky endeavour without making my analysis either judge or accomplice of specific parties. Yet, I do believe there’s value in exploring some of the underlying processes that make plagiarism such a difficult phenomenon to agree on. The result, I’m afraid might come off as simply feeble as I’m choosing the allegorical road, but you’ll be the judge of that.

The beast of plagiarism knocks at the illustrator’s door unexpectedly, with a terrifying riddle, does ‘this’ look like ‘that’? But as they ask around them whether ‘this’ is a of copy of ‘that’, they’re surprised to notice that no one seems to agree. Some say, ‘Yes it’s obviously a rip off’ while others claim, ‘No it’s not that similar’. Puzzled, the illustrator decides to seek counsel beyond the realm of the creative industry and embarks on a journey, crossing many disciplinary lands. On that journey, the illustrator will encounter three wise characters who live on three close hills. The philosopher, the psychologist, and the biologist, as they are known, have been thinking about how things look the same for a long time. But as it is customary with wise characters, each of them might not provide very satisfying answers but maybe news ways of asking questions. Be warned.

The philosopher’s cabin

The first stop on that journey brings the illustrator to the door of the philosopher. That philosopher’s name is Nelson Goodman, and his foray into the study of similarity was quick and deathly. He heavily criticized the usefulness of the concept in philosophy and even its existence as a “real” thing we could study. He called similarity “insidious” and “slippery”. “We’re off to a great start” thinks the illustrator.

One of the major takeaways of his Seven Strictures On Similarity is that similarity judgements are always context-bound, and therefore always situated specific conditions. As usual, the philosopher gives the illustrator a thought experiment to illustrate his point. “Picture a table with on it 3 glasses filled with a liquid” says the philosopher. “The first two glasses are filled with a translucent liquid, the third one with the red one. You’re being asked to decide which two of these items are the most similar. A first answer at this stage will probably be the first two, because they’re both translucent. Now, what if you’re told that the second glass is filled with acid and the third with a vegetal red dye ‘and [you’re] thirsty’”. Suddenly, with a new context —prior knowledge and thirst— the grounds on which similarity is evaluated shift, and so does our similarity itself.

In a comparison with physics, the philosopher states:

“In this, similarity is much like motion. Where a frame of reference is tacitly or explicitly established, all is well; but apart from a frame of reference, to say that something moves is as incomplete as to say that something is to the left of. We have to say what a thing is to the left of, what it moves in relation to, and in what respects two things are similar.”

Goodman’s key insight here is that there’s no such thing as mere similarity, but always with respect to something else, context, conditions, necessity, etc. So, similarity isn’t only about what we look at, but where we look from.

“Alright” thinks the illustrator, “but plagiarism is a real thing with concrete consequences that thought experiments can hardly resolve, better keep walking.”

The psychologist’s cottage

Drawn to a more concrete approach to similarity, the illustrator knocks at the door of the psychologist. They’re interested in similarity because it seems to be the mechanism that enables us to make categories, and hence function in the world. “Assessing similarity and difference leads us to group or separate things, and therefore to make sense of our otherwise widely complex and fluid world” she says.

One key discovery of their work in relation to perception is that what constitutes a category can shift depending on how our brain has been “trained”. For example, think of the phonemic distinction between the sounds ‘b-’ and ‘v-’ in English and in Spanish. In the former, these are perceived as radically different sounds, and substituting one for the other would change the meaning of a word. In Spanish on the other hand, the distinction is not relevant to meaning making at the word level and speakers would usually use any of them and every shade in between. As a result, hearers who have been socialized in Spanish all their lives might have trouble hearing the difference between the two in an Anglophone’s speech, and an English speaker might struggle making sense of the Spanish speaker’s sounds in terms of their own reference frame.

The lesson from this study of similarity by psychologists reveals a few important things. First, similarity judgement is situated at the threshold between low-level processes of perception (i.e. seeing form, sounds, etc.) and high-level processes (i.e. mobilizing prior knowledge, training, etc.). Second, similarity is the product not only of the inherent qualities of an object but of its perceiver and their own world views and abilities. And third, we make sense of similarity not just for its own sake but with a goal, to navigate the world (avoid danger, communicate, etc.).

While more experimentally satisfying than the philosopher’s claims, the psychologist’s insights also proved to complexify the question of similarity rather than to clarify it as the illustrator might have hoped.

“Aren’t some things just similar to others in their own rights, no matter who looks at them or how or in what conditions?” Asks the illustrator as they make their way to the third and final hill.

The biologist’s lodge

Unlike the philosopher and the psychologist, the biologist is concerned with how things really are, not just how they appear. More precisely, the evolutionary biologist who lives here is interested in how species evolved and split over time from a common ancestor. In this vast project, she faces a challenge that will echo the experience of the illustrator. In the presence of two similar features, she needs to ask: is this similarity a sign of a common ancestor, or a mere sign of common environments or necessities? In asking this, the biologist is concerned with the causal link between things, and so is the illustrator.

To parse through the complexity of how things look, and how relevant it is or not to their research, biologists established two concepts, homology, and analogy. She explains, “A homologous similarity between two features, points to a common ancestor, while an analogous similarity points to a mere ‘convergence’ of unrelated species. To qualify as homologous, a pair needs to present structural similarities. This means that maybe they don’t necessarily look exactly alike at first glimpse, but in their underlying structure, for example the ways bones are shaped and linked together, they present striking similarities. On the other hand, analogous similarity can seem a priori clear because they serve the same function, but when looking at underlying structures, we see differences that dispel the possibility of an actual connection”.

Seeing the look on the illustrator’s face, the biologist proceeds with examples. “Whale flippers are homologous to bat wings, but bat wings are analogous to bee wings. Strange right? The whale flippers and the bat wings share the same bone structure (which our own arms and hands also share) even though now they have completely different functions. On the other hand, while the bat wing and the bee wing serve the same function, flying, they don’t share the same structure or embryonic development at all. The first pair of similarity therefore points to a common ancestor, while the second points to an adaptation to the need to fly.

“It’s all about what you’re basing your assessment on” she says as the illustrator leaves, “you’ve got to figure out how deep you’re able to see into things to draw conclusions”.

The return

The illustrator returns home to plagiarism with a new set of tools to start probing the beast in a different way. Looking at the images and the people entangled in plagiarism cases, new questions emerge.

From the philosopher’s insight, the illustrator now asks, in what respect are these images similar? The grounds on which similarity is construed can shift and most importantly not be shared by all. So, what are the conditions that lead someone to say that some things are similar and another to say the opposite? In the creative industry, the different respects on which is assessed the similarity of two images vary. Designers, illustrators, clients, viewers, critics, etc. want different things from images and therefore evaluate them on different grounds. Just like thirst affected our judgement of similarity of the liquids, these differing (and sometimes competing) goals change what different people see as they look at the same thing.

Thanks to the psychologist’s questioning, the illustrator also asks, what categories motivates the recognition of plagiarism? By asking about categorization, plagiarism reveals its underlying logic. Interestingly, seeing plagiarism often relies more on seeing differences then similarities. In recent cases, the reasons illustrators would consider something plagiarism are often grounded in the recognition of the particularities of the original, the intentions of the artists, the details of the execution, etc. i.e. what makes it different from the copy. In other words, they are in two different categories. On the other hand, those dismissing claims of plagiarism often do so by stating that both the copy and the original are so similar they simply achieve the same thing in the same manner because they are part of the same category (or in design terms, the same trend). Plagiarism then becomes about the categories that structure our perception, and how general or specific these categories are.

Finally, inspired by the biologist’s concerns for how things really are, the illustrator asks a final question, what features of an image does plagiarism target? After looking at how people see images and on what grounds, it’s important to acknowledge that images are complex things, made of multiple layers, some considered deep and structural, others deemed superficial. Not all plagiarism is equal and triggers equal reactions. I was recently talking to an illustrator who’s been on the receiving end of a copycat but who wasn’t much affected by it. The copy concerned the characters, even their pose, etc. of the illustrator’s work, but not their general style. For this reason, the copy felt less visceral, less personal, than it might have been if their whole style had been ripped off. The copy was a superficial analogy of fragments of images, instead of being the homologous stylistic copy that AI for example have been producing recently. Like the biologist who learns to see deeper than the superficial similarities, the illustrator thinks of how different people in the industry could learn to see deeper than the surface of an image, to really see the structures of what makes it an original piece of art or not. This way we might at least agree on what we see.

The End

I’m afraid this tale has no moral, not even a cathartic ending. Plagiarism still exists, just as ‘slippery’ as similarity and differences. It walks the line between the two, tricking our senses and our brains, benefiting some and hurting others.

I hope this foray into other disciplines have at least provided us with different sets of terms to understand how, to some people an image is a copy of another, but to others it is not. Listening to the philosopher, the psychologist and the biologist has taught us that both can be true at the same time, that we might not all see the same thing, or think about what we see in the same way.

Yet, this doesn’t make it any less problematic. In no other situations is the power dynamic of the creative industry clearer than in plagiarism cases. Who gets to decide what is similar or not, with what respect, through what categories, and based on what features, is ultimately a matter of who has power. My goal with this tale isn’t to dismiss this power, quite the opposite. As powerful ways of seeing become naturalized as ‘evident’, they escape critical engagement. Maybe counterintuitively, suspending the question of power for a moment helps to uncover some of the hidden mechanisms those powerful ways of seeing rely on to function. I hope by becoming more aware of these we might become more equipped to make stronger arguments to protect artists’ work and livelihood.