Russ Shafer-Landau Is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

question 3

True/False

Russ Shafer-Landau is professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of several books including The Fundamentals of Ethics, fourth edition (2017) and The Ethical Life, fourth edition (2017). He is also the editor of Oxford Studies in Metaethics. In this reading he reviews some common criticisms of utilitarianism and argues that although some of them are less than decisive, others pose serious problems for the theory. Utilitarianism's most crippling shortcomings are its insistence that there is no intrinsic wrongness (or rightness) and its requirement that we must maximize well-being even if justice is thwarted.
-Shafer-Landau says that utilitarianism's moral flexibility comes from its refusal to absolutely prohibit any kind of action.

---

Definitions:

Classical Conditioning

Principles stemming from Ivan Pavlov’s digestion experiments that help people understand the most elementary type of learning: how people acquire uncomplicated habits and reflexes.

Habits

Regular tendencies or practices, especially ones that are hard to give up.

Reinforcement Schedules

The strategies used in behavior modification that determine how and when a response will be rewarded.

Mentally Alert

The state of being aware and able to think and respond quickly; sharpness of mind.