Sunk costs, rationality, and acting for the sake of the past

Noûs 38 (1):60–85 (2004)
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Abstract

If you are more likely to continue a course of action in virtue of having previously invested in that course of action, then you tend to honor sunk costs. It is widely thought both that (i) individuals often do give some weight to sunk costs in their decision-making and that (ii) it is irrational for them to do so. In this paper I attempt to cast doubt on the conventional wisdom about sunk costs, understood as the conjunction of these two claims.

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Thomas Kelly
Princeton University

Citations of this work

Good Guesses.Kevin Dorst & Matthew Mandelkern - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (3):581-618.
Hindsight bias is not a bias.Brian Hedden - 2019 - Analysis 79 (1):43-52.
Faith and steadfastness in the face of counter-evidence.Lara Buchak - 2017 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2):113-133.

View all 16 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
After virtue: a study in moral theory.Alasdair C. MacIntyre - 1981 - Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
Sources of the self: the making of the modern identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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