Incontinence, Honouring Sunk Costs and Rationality

Abstract

Davidson’s famous account of the possibility conditions of incontinent action renders continent action materially unfeasible. The very idea of incontinent action becomes thus a hollow one. I present an alternative description of these possibility conditions that renders continent action materially feasible, and both, continent and incontinent action, cognitively plausible. In a nutshell, my proposal rests upon the drawing of an essential cognitive contrast between explicit processes of deliberative reasoning and lower level heuristic procedures. I argue that my proposal is explanatorily useful. I do this by showing how it can be applied to account for the cognitive dissonance effect observable among many subjects that honour sunk costs and by pointing out how viewing at least an important subset of behaviours of honouring sunk costs this way will enable us to consider them as peculiar manifestations of a more general and meaningful pattern in human behaviour.