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- Title
Moral Sunk Costs.
- Authors
Lazar, Seth
- Abstract
Suppose that you are trying to pursue a morally worthy goal, but cannot do so without incurring some moral costs. At the outset, you believed that achieving your goal was worth no more than a given moral cost. And suppose that, time having passed, you have wrought only harm and injustice, without advancing your cause. You can now reflect on whether to continue. Your goal is within reach. What's more, you believe you can achieve it by incurring—from this point forward—no more cost than it warranted at the outset. If you now succeed, the total cost will exceed the upper bound marked at the beginning. But the additional cost from this point is below that upper bound. And the good you will achieve is undiminished. How do the moral costs you have already inflicted bear upon your decision now?
- Subjects
DEONTOLOGICAL ethics; HARM (Ethics); DECISION theory; SUNK costs; JUST war doctrine &; ethics
- Publication
Philosophical Quarterly, 2018, Vol 68, Issue 273, p841
- ISSN
0031-8094
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/pq/pqy030