ABSTRACT
Most of us are familiar with the experience of making a choice or series of choices that we later look back on with regret. This chapter looks at three sorts of scenarios that illuminate this phenomenon and reviews some philosophical arguments concerning whether and, if so, how agents in the described predicaments are going wrong. Each sort of scenario is associated with a preference structure that raises a challenge with respect to effective choice over time, as well as associated worries regarding the agent’s rationality. Relatedly, the scenarios seem to invite the sort of regret that goes along with a sense that one somehow failed oneself, which is the sort of regret on which this chapter focuses.
