Zagzebski is credited with a profound innovation, which she calls the value problem, and was later called the swamping problem: one of the most important innovations in recent epistemology. I invented the swamping problem in a graduate epistemology seminar in 1987 at the University of Virginia. It is my best idea in epistemology. The first thing I did with it was refute reliabilism.
Zagzebski's discussion is remarkably close recapitulation of mine, including the very same quotes trimmed the very same way. And she has gotten credit for the swamping problem for all this time. Here is a breathtaking plagiarism:
Zagzebski, "The Source of the Epistemic Good," Metaphilosphy p.16:
Notice that in this passage BonJour understands the value of justification the same way the reliabilist does, as something that is good because it is truth conducive. The internality of justification has nothing to do with its value on BonJour’s account. But as we have seen, if the feature that converts true belief into knowledge is good just because of its conduciveness to truth, we are left without an explanation of why knowing p is better than merely truly believing.
The basic role of justification is that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable mediating link between our subjective starting point and our objective goal. . . .If epistemic justification were not conducive to truth in this way, if finding epistemically justified beliefs did not substantially increase the likelihood of finding true ones, then epistemic justification would be irrelevant to our main cognitive goal and of dubious worth. It is only if we have some reason for thinking that epistemic justification constitutes a path to truth that we as cognitive beings have any motive for preferring epistemically justified beliefs to epistemically unjustified ones. Epistemic justification is therefore in the final analysis only an instrumental value, not an intrinsic one. (BonJour 1985, 7–8)14
Sartwell, Why Knowledge is Merely True Belief, p. 173:
The reliabilist Alvin Goldman claims, similarly, that a condition on an account of justification is that beliefs justified on the account be likely to be true; he says that a plausible conception of justification will be “truth-linked” ( op. cit. 116-21) . And the coherentist Laurence Bonjour puts it even more strongly. p. 173
If epistemic justification were not conducive to truth in this way, if finding epistemically justified beliefs did not substantially increase the likelihood of finding true ones, then epistemic justification would be irrelevant to our main cognitive goal and of dubious worth. It is only if we have some reason for thinking that epistemic justification constitutes a path to truth that we as cognitive beings have any motive for preferring epistemically justified beliefs to epistemically unjustified ones. Epistemic justification is therefore in the final analysis only an instrumental value, not an intrinsic one. (ibid. p. 8)
The introductions are conceptually indistinguishable, the quotes identical. If you look at the sections, you will see that the arguments are quite identical.
This is a devastating, though it seems small: Zagzeski does actually cite my paper (p. 13) in a footnote, proving that she had consulted it. And yet it is just a wave near the beginning. It doies not attribute any of the ideas to me at all (satisfy yourself). Then she goes on to practically quote that very paper without attributing the ideas to me.
To clarify this point: if you consider the role of the reference in the paper, it is damning not exonerating. It is very decisive in proving the plagiarism if you understand where the reference is and what she does with it.
These points are dispositive. A longer look into the papers will show identity in the central argument that cannot be explained by any other plausible means.
