Cashing out the money-pump argument

Abstract

The money-pump argument figures as the staple argument in support of the view that cyclic preferences are irrational. According to a prominent way of understanding the argument, it is grounded in the assumption (or intuition) that (tangential qualifications aside) it is irrational to make choices that lead one to a dispreferred alternative. My aim in this paper is to motivate diffidence with respect to understanding the money-pump argument in this way by suggesting that (1) if it is so understood, the argument emerges as question-begging and as a complicated distraction in the debate concerning cyclic preferences, and that (2) there is a way of understanding the argument that casts it as grounded in a less controversial starting point.