## 1. The Variety of Reasons



Humans engage in practical reasoning: they deliberate about what to do
and how to do it. And they often act in light of reasons which can
then explain their actions, and may also justify them.
These ideas go back to Plato (*Protagoras* and
*Republic*, Book 4) and Aristotle (*De Anima*, see esp.
III.10; see also Price 2011). They have been a constant theme in
discussions of the character of human behaviour in the history of
philosophy. In the 18th century, David Hume and Immanuel
Kant offered radically different views about the role and importance
of Reason (the faculty of reason) in guiding and justifying human
actions. Their contributions remain influential today, but in the
second half of the 20th century, the focus shifted from
discussion of the faculty of reason to discussion of the very concept
of a reason and to questions about different kinds of reasons and
their interconnections.



As mentioned in the introduction, a distinction is commonly drawn in
contemporary debates between two kinds of reason:
"normative" and "motivating" reasons. Jonathan
Dancy (2000: 20ff. and Appendix) discusses the history of this
distinction. It is sometimes said to date back to Francis Hutcheson
(1730), though Dancy notes that the modern distinction does not
clearly map on to earlier ones. Whatever its history, the distinction
is now accepted by most if not all contemporary philosophers who write
on this topic (Raz 1975; Smith 1994; Parfit 1997; and Dancy 1995
and 2000 are representative examples).



A normative reason is a reason (for someone) to act--in T. M.
Scanlon's phrase, "a consideration that counts in favour
of" someone's acting in a certain way (1998 and 2004). A
motivating reason is a reason for which someone does something, a
reason that, in the agent's eyes, counts in favour of her acting
in a certain way. When an agent acts motivated by a reason, she acts
"in light of that reason" and the reason will be a premise
in the practical reasoning, if any, that leads to the action.
Motivating reasons can also figure in explanations of actions that
cite agents' reasons, what are called "reason
explanations" of actions. Because of that, they are sometimes
called "explanatory" reasons, though we shall scrutinize
this description more carefully below.



Dancy suggests that the distinction between different types of reason
is best understood as one between questions we can ask about them (a
view that he finds also in Baier 1958):



> 
> 
> If we do speak in this way, of motivating and normative reasons, this
> should not be taken to suggest that there are two sorts of reason, the
> sort that motivate and the sort that are good. There are not. There
> are just two questions that we use the single notion of a reason to
> answer. When I call a reason "motivating", all that I am
> doing is issuing a reminder that the focus of our attention is on
> matters of motivation, for the moment. When I call it
> "normative", again all that I am doing is stressing that
> we are currently thinking about whether it is a good reason, one that
> favours acting in the way proposed (Dancy 2000: 2-3).
> 



According to this suggestion, there is a single notion of a reason
that is used to answer different questions: the question whether there
is a reason for someone to do something (normative) and the question
what someone's reason for acting is (motivating). For instance,
we can ask whether there is a reason for the government of a country
to tax sugary drinks (normative), and ask also for the
government's reason for actually taxing the drinks (motivating).
The same reason may answer both questions: the reason that favours
taxing the drink may be that the tax will help reduce child obesity;
and that may also be the government's reason for taxing the
drinks. In that case, the government is motivated to tax drinks by a
reason that there is for it to do so, the reason that may justify its
doing so. But we don't always act for the reasons that favour
our actions. For instance, the government may tax sugary drinks
because (or in part because) some of its members own shares in a
company that sells low-sugar drinks. In that case, the reason for
which the government decides to tax sugary drinks is not, or not
solely, the reason that favours its doing so. The distinction between
normative and motivating reasons, therefore, enables us to separate
the question what reasons motivate agents to act (a psychological
question) and the question whether those are good reasons: reasons
that favour and justify their acting thus.



If this way of understanding talk about different kinds of reasons is
right, perhaps the picture is more complex than the dichotomy of
"normative vs. motivating" suggests. For there seem to be
at least three distinct questions about the relation between reasons
and actions. There are questions about whether there is a reason that
favours someone's action; questions about what reason motivates
someone to act; and also questions about what reasons explain his
action. Consider the behaviour of Othello in Shakespeare's play
of the same name. Othello kills Desdemona in the belief, induced by
Iago, that she has been unfaithful to him. The tragedy, however, is
that she has not: Desdemona is innocent, she loves Othello and is
faithful to him. Clearly, there is no reason that justifies the
murder: no normative reason. But there are two things we can say about
Othello's reason for acting and his action. One is that Othello
is motivated to kill Desdemona by the (putative) fact that Desdemona
has been unfaithful. The other is that we can explain his action of
killing her by citing the fact that he believes that Desdemona has
been unfaithful. So here we seem to have two different reasons: one
that motivates--the (putative) fact that Desdemona has been
unfaithful; and one that explains--the (actual) fact that Othello
believes that she has. We can distinguish, then, between the reason
that explains Othello's action (the fact that he believes that
Desdemona has been unfaithful) and the reason that motivates him to
act (the alleged infidelity itself). It might be tempting to think
that Othello's motivating reason is just the fact that he
believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful. We shall examine below
reasons why the temptation should be resisted. Because of this, the
account that follows proceeds by dividing reasons for action initially
into two categories: normative and motivating-explanatory. It will
then present the case for treating motivating and explanatory reasons
separately.



Until relatively recently, the distinction between different kinds of
reasons was assumed, whether explicitly or not, to imply that these
reasons were things of different kinds. Normative reasons were
conceived of as facts, and so were regarded as mind-independent: the facts
are what they are independently of whether anyone knows them or thinks
about them. By contrast, motivating and explanatory reasons were
conceived of as mental states of agents and, as such, as entities
which depend on someone's thinking or believing certain things
(Audi 2001 and Mele 2003 are representative examples--but see
also Mele 2013). In recent years, however, this assumption has been
challenged, giving rise to a number of disputes about the ontology of
reasons--that is, disputes about what kind of thing or things
reasons are. As we examine different kinds of reasons, we shall
encounter some of these ontological debates. We start with normative
reasons.


## 2. Normative Reasons



A reason is said to be a "normative reason" for acting
because it favours someone's acting. But what does it mean to
say that a reason "favours" an action? One way of
understanding this claim is in terms of justification: a reason
justifies or makes it right for someone to act in a certain way. This
is why normative reasons are also called "justifying"
reasons.



The term "normative reason" derives from the idea that
there are norms, principles or codes that prescribe actions: they make
it right or wrong to do certain things. To take a relatively trivial,
culturally-determined example, the norms of etiquette in some
countries say that when meeting someone for the first time, the right
thing to do is to shake hands, whereas in other countries, the right
thing to do is to kiss them on both cheeks. So the fact that in the UK
shaking hands is the norm of etiquette is a reason that makes it right
to do so in the UK when you meet someone for the first time. There are
many other, often more important, norms, principles and values,
implicit or explicit, that make it right to do or not do certain
things. The existence of these norms or values depends on a variety of
things: logical and natural relations, conventions, rules and
regulations, etc. And the norms or values may be moral, prudential,
legal, hedonic (relating to pleasure) or of some other kind. There are
normative reasons, therefore, corresponding to the variety of values
and norms: normative reasons that are moral, prudential, legal,
hedonic, etc.



The variety of norms or values that underpin normative reasons
requires some modification of the claim that reasons that favour
actions make those actions right. If a reason favours my doing
something, then I have a "*pro-tanto*" reason to do
it: it is *pro tanto* (i.e., to that extent) right for me to do
it. But there may be a reason against my doing it: a
*pro-tanto* reason not to do it. The fact that a joke is funny
may be a reason to tell it; but the fact that it'll embarrass
someone may be a reason against doing so. In that case, I have a
*pro-tanto* reason to tell the joke and a different
*pro-tanto* reason not to tell it. Whether it would be right
for me to tell the joke, whether I have an
"all-things-considered" reason to tell it, will depend on
whether either of the reasons is stronger than the other. If so, that
reason will override or "defeat" the other reason. Only if
the *pro-tanto* reason for telling the joke is undefeated will
it be right or justified all things considered for me to tell the
joke.



But what sort of thing is a normative reason? What gives reasons their
normative force, so that they can make it right for someone to do
something? And what determines whether there is such a reason and to
whom it applies? These and related questions have received much
philosophical attention in recent years.



There is consensus that normative reasons are facts (Raz 1975; Scanlon
1998), though the consensus is not universal. The question is
complicated by disagreement about what facts of any kind are: are they
concrete or abstract entities? Is a fact the same as the corresponding
true proposition, or is the fact the "truth-maker" of the
proposition? Are there any facts other than empirical facts, e.g.,
logical, mathematical, moral or aesthetic facts? For instance, it has
been argued, notably by John Mackie, that there are no moral facts.
Mackie argued against the existence of moral facts partially on the
grounds that they would be metaphysically "queer". He held
that, if there are any moral facts, they would have to be both
objective and necessarily motivating to those who are aware of them,
and he claimed that it was wholly implausible that anything could have
such properties (Mackie 1977). If Mackie is right that there are no
moral facts, then either moral reasons are not normative reasons; or
at least some normative reasons namely, moral reasons, are not
facts.



Among those who hold that normative reasons are facts, some hold that
facts are true propositions and hence that reasons are also true
propositions (Darwall 1983; Smith 1994; Scanlon 1998). Others reject
the idea that normative reasons could be true propositions; for
instance, Dancy (2000) does so on the grounds that propositions are
abstract and representational (they represent the way the world is)
but reasons must be concrete and non-representational (they are ways
the world is). These problems are complex and have many ramifications
but we cannot and perhaps need not resolve them here because the view
that normative reasons are facts is generally meant to imply a very
undemanding notion of facts. Thus Raz says that, "when saying
that facts are reasons" he is using the term "fact"
to designate 



> 
> 
> that in virtue of which true or justified statements are true or
> justified. By "fact" is meant simply that which can be
> designated by the use of the operator "the fact that
> ...". (1975: 17-18)
> 



There is less consensus about the basis of the normativity of
practical reasons: the capacity of reasons to justify actions. On one
proposal, the normativity of practical reasons depends on the
goodness, intrinsic or instrumental, of doing what there is reason to
do. This view is associated with Aristotle who, in the *Nicomachean
Ethics*, links what is right to do (what one has reason to do)
with what is conducive to the good (whether intrinsically or
instrumentally). The idea was prevalent among medieval philosophers,
for example Thomas Aquinas (*Summa Theologiae,* 1a, q.82), and
in the 20th century it was central to Elizabeth
Anscombe's discussion of intentional actions (1957). Many
contemporary philosophers (e.g., Raz 1999 and Dancy 2000) have offered
accounts of the normativity of reasons in line with this idea, so a
reason is a normative reason to do something because it picks the
good-making features or value of the relevant action. As Raz puts it,
"reasons are facts in virtue of which (...) actions are
good in some respect and to some degree" (1999: 23). There are
other accounts that ground the normativity of reasons on the concept of
rationality (e.g., Korsgaard 1996, who is influenced by Kant; and
Smith 1994 and Gert 2004, who base their accounts on the concept of
the "ideally rational agent"). A different proposal, which
echos Hume's views about the relation between reason and
passions, claims that the normativity of reasons is based on their
relation to our desires. Accordingly, what one has reason to do
depends ultimately on one's desires and motivations. Roughly,
someone's having a reason to act requires their having some
motivation that would be served by acting in the way favoured by the
putative reason. The motivation may be such things as desires, plans,
long-standing projects or values. And it may be something the agent
actually has, or something she would have if she reasoned properly
from her current motivations. Desire-based accounts of this sort have
been defended recently by Williams 1979 and 1989, Schroeder 2008, and
Goldman 2009.



However we explain their normativity, normative reasons should be
capable of motivating agents to act--though of course they may
often fail to do so. Therefore, any account of normative reasons must
offer a plausible explanation of the relationship between the
normativity of reasons and the capacity that reasons have to motivate
agents to act. An account must explain how thinking that there is a
reason for me to do something can motivate me to act, and to act
*for* that reason. Desire-based accounts of reasons might seem
to have the edge here. If the reasons that apply to me depend on my
antecedent motivations (desires, plans), then it is plausible that I
shall be motivated to do what I believe will contribute to the
satisfaction or furthering of those motivations. But desire-based
accounts fare less well in accommodating another central claim about
normative reasons. For it seems equally plausible that there are
reasons (for instance, moral reasons) that apply to agents regardless
of their motivations. Arguably, we all have reason to do what morality
dictates, whether or not we are (or would be, if we reasoned
consistently from our current motivations), motivated by those
reasons. (For a detailed discussion of these issues, see the entry on
 reasons for action: internal vs. external.)



The claim that something is a normative reason for action is generally
thought to be a "relational" claim: it establishes a
relation between a fact, an agent, and an action kind. The relation is
that of "being a reason for" (see Raz 1975 and 1998, Dancy
2004, Cuneo 2007). For example, the fact that a person has ingested a
lethal poison may be a reason for the paramedics to give the person an
antidote. According to some, the relation involves not just a person,
a reason and an action, but more aspects: a time, circumstances, etc.
(Skorupski 2010 and Scanlon 2014). This relational view of reasons
gives a minimal sense in which claims about normative reasons are
"agent-relative": they relate agents to reasons (a more
substantial sense is developed in Nagel 1970 and 1986 and discussed in
the entry
 reasons for action: agent-neutral vs. agent-relative).
 But even in the minimal sense, the agent-relativity of reasons raises
questions about the conditions that determine when a reason for acting
applies to a particular agent. One such question, mentioned in the
previous paragraph, is whether the reasons that apply to you depend on
your desires and motivations. Another question is whether they depend
on your knowledge and beliefs. To go back to the example of Othello:
on the one hand it seems clear that Othello has no reason to kill
Desdemona, and the reason he thinks he has--that she is
unfaithful--is no reason at all. On the other hand, it might seem
that Othello does have a reason, for he believes that Desdemona is
unfaithful and believes, moreover, that his reputation has been
damaged and needs to be restored with her death. And those beliefs
appear to give him a reason to do what he does, at least from his
perspective.



Philosophers disagree about how to reconcile these competing claims.
One way of resolving the tension between them is to say that Othello
has no *normative* reason to kill Desdemona but has a
*motivating* reason: viz., the falsehood he believes. Smith
(1994) and Dancy (2000) both offer suggestions of this sort (though
Smith calls Othello's beliefs "his normative
reasons"). Others, e.g., Schroeder (2008), talk about
"objective" and "subjective" normative
reasons, so that Othello would have a subjective normative reason but
no objective normative reason to kill Desdemona. These positions are
all "objectivist" in that they presuppose that whether an
agent has an (objective) normative reason to act depends solely on the
facts and not on the agent's beliefs (see Williams 1979).
"Perspectivists" take a different view. They claim that
whether someone has a normative reason to do something is not
independent of her perspective, which includes her beliefs (see Fantl
and McGrath 2009 and Gibbons 2010). Certain cases of ignorance and
mistake help to bring out their view. A much discussed case introduced
by Williams (1979) concerns an agent, call him Sam, who orders a gin
and tonic and, when served a glass with a liquid that looks like gin
and tonic, forms the belief that it is gin and tonic, when in fact the
glass contains petrol and ice. Does Sam have a normative reason to
drink what's in the glass? The objectivists say that the answer
depends solely on the facts, so Sam has no normative reason to drink
the liquid. Perspectivists, by contrast, say that given Sam's
perspective, which includes a reasonable (though false) belief that
the liquid is gin and tonic, Sam does have a normative reason to drink
what's in the glass.



Perspectivists tend to defend their position by reference to
considerations of rationality. Agents are often in situations in which
they don't know all the relevant facts. And yet, perspectivists
say, these agents often do what is reasonable or rational for them to
do, given their perspective. If, as seems plausible, one acts
rationally when one acts for reasons that make it rational for one to
so act, then perspectivism must be right: agents who act in error or
ignorance often act rationally and, when they do, they act for reasons
they have to do what they do. In short, as perspectivism says, the
normative reasons an agent has depend in an important sense on his
epistemic perspective, and so an agent can have a normative reason
that is a false belief. Similar arguments are articulated in relation
to justification (though often questions about rationality and
justification are run together). Surely, the argument goes, what an
agent is justified in doing depends on whether he has reasons that
justify his doing that thing. But, again, there are cases where an
agent would surely be justified in doing something even though there
are conclusive reasons against doing it; and he would be justified
precisely because he doesn't know about those reasons. For
example, the fact that the cake is poisoned is a conclusive reason not
to offer it to your guests. But you might be justified in offering it
to them, the perspectivist says, if you don't know about the
poison. So considerations about the justification of action also seem
to support perspectivism because they show that what reasons you have
depends on your perspective.



There are several moves that an opponent of perspectivism can make in
response here. She can concede that an agent who acts according to his
epistemic perspective but guided by a false belief acts rationally,
but deny that acting rationally requires that the agent act for
normative reasons. Instead, the objectivist may say, acting rationally
only requires acting in a way that is consistent with one's
beliefs, so long as these are themselves rational. This response could
rely on, e.g., Derek Parfit's conception of rationality, which
requires acting guided by one's real or apparent reasons (Parfit
2001, an "apparent reason" is a falsehood that an agent
believes to be true, and treats as a normative reason but which is not
a normative reason; see also Kolodny 2005). As for the justification
of action, the objectivist can deny that the actions of agents who act
in ignorance or guided by a mistaken belief are justified. Whether the
action is justified, the objectivist will say, depends purely on
whether the facts make it the right thing to do, and not on the
agent's beliefs. So in the cake example above, the action of
offering the poisoned cake to his guests is not justified: there is no
normative reason that makes it the right thing to do. And that is so
regardless of what the agent knows or believes. A different question,
the objectivist will say, is whether an agent who does something wrong
because of his false beliefs or ignorance is himself justified and/or
blameworthy for so acting. If our host's ignorance about the
poison is not culpable, he will most likely not be blameworthy and the
agent may be justified. But in saying this, the objectivist need not
be conceding that the *action* was justified, i.e., done for a
normative reason, only that the host may be exculpated for doing the
wrong thing. As Austin noted (1957), we must distinguish between a
justification and an excuse. When accused of wrongdoing, one may offer
a justification, which aims to show that in fact the thing done was
right because there was reason for doing it. Alternatively, one may
offer an excuse: admit that one did the wrong thing but plead to be
partly or wholly exculpated--for instance, because it was done
out of ignorance or mistake. (There are other excuses, such as
accidents or coercion but those need not concern us here.) To return
to the cake example, our agent might be excused for doing the wrong
thing (poisoning the guests) if he was non-culpably ignorant about the
poison. By contrast, it might be possible to give a justification for
poisoning the guests: for instance, that they were in fact some
psychopaths intent on causing his family mortal harm. If so, poisoning
them with the cake may have been the right thing to do and, depending
on whether our agent was aware of the relevant facts and acted guided
by them, it may be that *he* was justified in poisoning them.
This example shows how questions about normative reasons bear directly
on the justification of agents, as distinct from the justification of
their actions, by raising questions about motivating reasons, to which
we now turn.


## 3. Motivating and Explanatory Reasons



It was suggested above that although reasons are traditionally divided
into two kinds: normative and motivating/explanatory, there may be a
case for distinguishing between motivating reasons and explanatory
reasons. The basis for doing so was said to be the existence of three
distinct questions about reasons: whether a reason *favours* an
action; whether a reason *motivates* an agent; and whether a
reason *explains* an agent's action. Accordingly, the
thought goes, we should recognise three kinds of reasons: normative,
motivating and explanatory. This way of classifying reasons is
explicitly accepted and/or defended by various authors (Baier 1958;
Alvarez 2007, 2009a, 2010; Hieronymi 2011); and it is hinted at, using
different terminology, by others (Smith 1994; Darwall 2003; Mantel
2014).



This three-part classification may seem excessively refined: is it
really necessary or advantageous to distinguish motivating and
explanatory reasons? After all, a motivating reason can always explain
the action that it motivates, so the question of what reason motivates
an agent and what reason explains her action are, one might think,
fundamentally the same. If so, "motivating" and
"explanatory" are surely just different labels for the
same kind of reason, at least in contexts of intentional actions. And
there appears to be no obvious advantage in regarding motivating and
explanatory reasons as distinct kinds.



These considerations against a three-part classification of reasons,
though plausible, are not decisive. First, the fact that the same
reason can answer different questions does not show that the questions
are not importantly different and, consequently that the reasons that
answer those questions are not of different kinds. We saw that to be
so for normative and motivating reasons: the same reason can answer a
question about motivation and one about justification. And yet, that
does not blur the difference between those questions, nor does it
undermine the importance of recognising the corresponding two kinds of
reasons. So the same may be true for motivating and explanatory
reasons.



Second, even if the same reason sometimes answers the two questions
about motivation and explanation, this is not always so. Although a
reason that motivates an action can always explain it, a reason that
can explain the action is not always the reason that motivates it. For
example, that he is jealous is a reason that explains why Othello
kills Desdemona. But that is not the reason that motivates him to kill
her. This example may appear not to be to the point because an
explanation that refers to his jealousy is not a
*rationalisation* of Othello's action: it doesn't
explain his action by citing *his* reason. That is right and
yet the example still shows that not all reasons that explain by
citing psychological factors, e.g., jealousy, are reasons that
motivate. Moreover, knowing that Othello acted out of jealousy gives
an indication of Othello's reason (Desdemona's suspected
unfaithfulness) and yet the reason of jealousy is not Othello's
motivating reason. Besides, the explaining and motivating reasons may
differ even in cases where the reason that explains makes reference to
the reason that motivates. For suppose that John punches Peter because
he finds out that Peter has betrayed him. The fact that John knows
that Peter has betrayed him is a reason that explains John's
action. This is an explanatory reason. But that fact about
John's mental state of knowledge is not the reason for which
John punches Peter. That reason is a fact about Peter, namely that he
has betrayed John. That is the reason that motivates John to punch
Peter--his motivating reason. So in this case we have two
different (though related) reasons: that Peter has betrayed John and
that John knows that Peter has betrayed him, which play different
roles. One reason motivates John to punch Peter (the betrayal); and
the other explains why he does it (the knowledge of the betrayal). To
be sure, the latter reason explains by reference to the former.
Nonetheless, these are different reasons that answer different questions about
motivation and explanation, respectively.



But isn't this distinction superficial? After all, the fact that
motivates John, i.e., that Peter has betrayed him, can also explain
John's action--we need not cite John's knowledge of
this fact. As we shall see below
 (3.2),
 this is controversial: some philosophers think that all reason
explanations require reference to psychological states of the agent.
Be that as it may, consider a different example. The fact that Othello
believes that Desdemona is unfaithful explains why he kills her. But
the fact that he believes in her infidelity is not the reason in light
of which he kills her, the reason that, in his eyes, favours killing
her. What he takes to favour killing her is the (putative) fact that
she is unfaithful. Again, these are importantly different reasons: for
it can be the case that Othello believes that Desdemona is unfaithful
without it being the case that she is, and *vice versa*.
Moreover, since Desdemona is not unfaithful, that putative fact cannot
be what explains Othello's action because something that is not
the case cannot explain anything--though, as we shall see below
(also
 3.2),
 this view of explanation has proved controversial too.



The intricacies of these controversies suggest that it may indeed be
helpful to keep apart questions of motivation and questions of
explanation even when we are dealing with reason explanations of
action. The advantages of drawing this distinction will be spelled out
in examining debates concerning motivating reasons and the explanation
of action. We shall see there that apparently competing claims about
motivating reasons and the explanation of action are often best
understood and resolved as claims about motivating or explanatory
reasons, respectively. The following passage, in which Stephen Darwall
comments on a putative disagreement between Dancy and Michael Smith,
helps to illustrate the point of the distinction:



> 
> 
> "Motivating reason" in Dancy's pen means the
> agent's reason, the (believed, putative) fact in light of which
> the agent acted. Smith, however, uses "the agent's
> normative reason" to refer to this and "motivating
> reason" to refer to the desire/belief combination necessary to
> explain behavior teleologically. (Darwall 2003: 442-3)
> 



Using the terminology introduced above, we can reframe Darwall's
point as follows. When Dancy says that reasons are (putative) facts
that agents take to favour their actions, he is talking about
motivating reasons. By contrast, when Smith says that reasons are
combinations of mental states of believing and desiring, he is talking
about explanatory reasons. So Dancy and Smith may not be disagreeing
but, rather, using the same term, "motivating reason" for
two different concepts: Dancy is using it to refer to the reasons in
light of which an agent acts, while Smith is using it to refer to the
reasons that explain an agent's act.



One of the most intensely debated issues concerning both motivating
and explanatory reasons is their ontology: what kind of thing are
these reasons? The philosophical literature of the last half of the
20th century was premised on the more or less explicit
assumption that motivating and explanatory reasons, which at the time
were not normally explicitly distinguished, were psychological
entities, in particular, mental states of agents, such as
Othello's believing that Desdemona is unfaithful to him. This
view of the ontology of reasons is often called "Psychologism".
That consensus began to dissolve at the turn of the century and
psychologism came under sustained attack. Opposition to it is
variously labelled "non-psychologism",
"externalism" and "objectivism". The last two
labels are also used for a variety of other philosophical views so, to
avoid confusion, I will stick with the term
"Non-psychologism".



Donald Davidson's 1963 paper, "Actions, Reasons, and
Causes" is often cited as the *locus classicus* of
psychologism. In that paper he characterises a reason as follows:



> 
> 
> C1. *R* is a primary reason why an agent performed the action
> *A* under the description *d* only if *R* consists of a
> pro attitude of the agent toward actions with a certain property, and
> a belief of the agent that *A*, under the description *d*,
> has that property. (1963: 687)
> 



A primary reason is a combination of two mental states: a pro-attitude
and a belief. These "primary reasons" are, in effect,
explanatory reasons: reasons that explain actions. Davidson defended
the "desire-belief" model of action explanation, according
to which reasons are states of believing and desiring that explain
actions because they cause them. This model is at the centre of
Davidson's account of intentional action, which he characterises
as an event caused "in the right way" by a primary reason.
Davidson's paper was highly influential; as a result,
psychologism became the dominant view for both motivating and
explanatory reasons, which, as noted above, were then not explicitly
distinguished.



Psychologism is very appealing. For it seems right that when an agent
acts for a reason, he acts motivated by an end that he desires (an end
towards which he has a "pro-attitude") and guided by a
belief about how to achieve that end. Because of this, it is possible
to explain his action by citing his desiring and his believing the
relevant things. To return to our example, we can explain why Othello
kills Desdemona by citing his wanting to defend his honour and his
believing that, given that Desdemona has been unfaithful, killing her
is the only way to do so. And this sort of explanation in terms of
states of belief and desire supports the relevant counterfactuals: had
Othello not believed that she had been unfaithful or had he not
believed that killing her was the only way to defend his honour, he
wouldn't have killed her, even if he had still wanted to restore
his reputation; and had he not cared about his reputation, he
wouldn't have killed her, despite his beliefs about her betrayal
and what was necessary to defend his honour. This sort of
consideration led to widespread acceptance of the view that
explanatory reasons are mental states and, since the latter were not
distinguished from motivating reasons, it also led to the view that
motivating reasons are mental states.



Among psychologists, some say that motivating and explanatory reasons
are mental or psychological *facts*, rather than mental states.
This is because psychologism holds that reasons are mental states such
as "an agent's believing (or wanting, or knowing)
something", and it is easy to move from the claim that
someone's reason is *his believing* something (a mental
state) to the claim that his reason is *that he believes*
something (a psychological fact). For instance, it is easy to move
from saying that Joe's reason for running is his believing that
he's late (a mental state) to saying that Joe's reason is
(the fact) that he believes that he's late.



These defenders of psychologism do not on the face of it disagree with
champions of non-psychologism about the ontology of these reasons. For
psychological facts are not themselves mental states, though they are
facts about mental states. But they still disagree with non-psychologists about
what these reasons are. Because of this, we need a way to
distinguish between psychologism and non-psychologism other than in terms of
ontology--the kind of thing that each camp says reasons
are--in order to capture the deeper disagreement between them.
Perhaps a better way to do so is to say that psychologism holds that
motivating and explanatory reasons are mental states *or* facts about
mental states of agents, whereas non-psychologism says that
motivating and explanatory reasons, like normative reasons, are facts
about all sorts of things, including mental states of agents.



The following sections examine current debates about psychologism, and
other issues, concerning motivating and explanatory reasons. It
does so separately for reasons of each kind, as that will facilitate
clarity in the various debates. We start with motivating reasons.


### 3.1 Motivating Reasons



The term "motivating reason" is a semi-technical
philosophical term. As we saw above, the phrase is now generally used
in the literature to refer to a reason that the agent takes to favour
her action, and in light of which she acts. Motivating reasons are
also considerations that can figure as premises in the practical
reasoning, if any, that leads to action. The terms "agential
reason", "the agent's normative reason",
"subjective (normative) reasons", "the agent's
operative reason" and "possessed reasons" are
sometimes also used to capture this notion of a reason. Because the
concept is somewhat technical, further clarification is needed.



First, the current use of the term excludes some otherwise plausible
candidates from being motivating reasons. For instance,
someone's goal or intention in acting, which is something the
agent desires (to grow vegetables; to kill Desdemona) seem to be
motivating factors in acting. But because these are not considerations
in light of which one acts, they do not fall under the category
"motivating reasons" as currently understood (but see Audi
1993). Similarly, a state of desiring (wanting to have one's
revenge), or a motive or emotion (for instance, jealousy) can be
states "that encompass motivation", to use Mele's
phrase, 2003: if one is in any such a mental state, one is thereby
motivated to act. But again, these are not motivating reasons in the
sense at issue because they are not considerations that the agent
takes to favour acting. Moreover, many hold that states of desiring
are often grounded in considerations about the goodness or value of
what is desired--a view defended by Anscombe 1957, Nagel 1970,
Quinn 1993, Raz 1999, and Schueler 2003, among others. When this is
so, the motivating reasons both for wanting and for acting accordingly
are the considerations about the goodness or rightness of what is
desired. To continue with our example, Othello's desire to kill
Desdemona is grounded in the thoughts that she is unfaithful to him
and that killing her is a fitting way to restore his reputation (even
if the desire is intensified by his jealousy). These considerations
are his reason for wanting to kill her and his reason for doing so. In
short, what Othello desires (to kill Desdemona), his goal (to redress
her betrayal), his state of desiring those things, or his motive
(jealousy) are things that motivate him to kill Desdemona but they are
not his motivating reasons in the semi-technical sense of the phrase
stipulated above. His motivating reasons, if we agree he has any, are,
rather, the putative facts that she is unfaithful to him and that
killing her is a fitting way to restore his reputation.



Second, talk of an agent's motivating reason, or of "the
agent's reason", always involves some simplification.
It's a simplification because an agent may be motivated to act
by more than one reason: I may hoover the house early in the morning
both because I won't have time to do it later and because it
will annoy my inconsiderate neighbour. Moreover, a fact will seem a
reason for me to act only in combination with other facts: that I
won't have time to hoover later will seem a reason to do it now
only if the house needs hovering. So my reason is, arguably, a
combination of at least two facts: that the house needs hovering and
that I won't be able to do it later. Finally, I may consider a
fact that counts against acting, for instance, that hoovering early
will also disturb my other neighbour, who is very considerate. If I
still decide to hoover, I do not act for that "con-reason"
but, arguably, I am still guided by it if I give it some weight in my
deliberation (see Ruben 2009 for a discussion of
"con-reasons").



Since motivating reasons are considerations that an agent takes to
favour acting, and since the reasons that favour acting are facts, it
might seem that motivating reasons are also facts or at least putative
facts, rather than mental states. However, the view that they are
mental states was, as noted earlier, the dominant view till the turn
of the 20th century, and it is still very popular today. A
seemingly compelling argument for adopting psychologism for motivating
reasons is the following. For a reason to motivate you it must be a
reason you have. This does not require that the reason should
genuinely apply to you. But it requires that you "possess"
the reason: you must know or believe the consideration that
constitutes the reason. And this appears to support the view that
reasons are mental states of agents, or facts about those states. The
opponent of psychologism about motivating reasons can respond by
noting that, while it is true that, for it to motivate you to act, you
must know or believe the thing that constitutes a reason, that
doesn't imply that the reason that motivates you is your knowing
or believing what you do. Rather your reason is what is known or
believed: a (putative) fact. To put the point differently, motivating
reasons are the contents of mental states but not mental states
themselves. This argument about motivating reasons is not, therefore,
decisive for psychologism. And in fact, there are several compelling
arguments against psychologism.



A very influential argument, found in Dancy 1995 and 2000, focuses on
the relation between normative and motivating reasons. The argument
hinges on Dancy's claim that any account of motivating reasons
must meet what he calls "the normative constraint":



> 
> 
> This [normative constraint] requires that a motivating reason, that in
> the light of which one acts, must be the sort of thing that is capable
> of being among the reasons in favour of so acting; it must, in this
> sense, be possible to act for a good reason. (2000: 103)
> 



Dancy's charge against psychologism about motivating reasons is
that it fails to meet the constraint because, if psychologism is
right, we can never act for a good reason. Why? In order to act for a
good reason, we need to act for a reason that is or could be a fact.
However, according to psychologism, motivating reasons are mental
states. If so, the reasons for which we act are mental states, and not
facts. If, by contrast, motivating reasons were, say facts and
putative facts, then some of the reasons for which we act would be
facts, and it would follow that we can, and sometimes do, act for a
good reason. But in saying that motivating reasons are mental states,
psychologism eliminates this possibility, for a mental state can never
be a fact. As Dancy puts it, psychologism has the consequence that
"the reasons why we act can never be among the reasons in favour
of acting" (2000: 105). The argument relies on the
"identity thesis" about reasons: the thesis that you act
for a good reason, only if your motivating reason is identical to the
normative reason that favours your action (see Heuer 2004 for a
helpful explanation).



Dancy (2000: 106ff.) considers a possible response: that acting for a
good reason may simply require your motivating reason to be a mental
state whose content is a good reason. So, you act for a good reason if
your motivating reason for, say, taking your umbrella is your
*believing* that it is raining, which is a mental state whose
content--"it is raining"--is a good reason to
take your umbrella. The success of this response to Dancy's
argument is unclear. On the one hand, if the response is that the
reasons that motivate us are the *contents* of our mental
states of believing, this meets the normative constraint but it does
not favour psychologism. It meets the normative constraint because the
content is the fact that it is raining and that is a good
reason. But this interpretation amounts to abandoning psychologism
because the contents of mental states are not themselves mental
states. On the other hand, the response might be just the assertion
that a mental state with the right content can be a good reason for
acting. But this does not seem so much a response to Dancy's
argument as a refusal to engage with it. For it remains unclear how,
according to this response, we can ever act for a good (i.e., a
normative) reason (but see Mantel 2014 for an attempt to develop the
objection by rejecting the identity thesis).



This brings us to another, related argument against psychologism,
which is simply that consideration of what agents take their reasons
for acting to be, and of what they typically give and accept as their
reasons for acting, count against psychologism. Thus, as Othello
considers what to do, even while in the grip of his jealousy, his
reasoning does not include considerations about whether he believes
this or that but rather considerations about what Desdemona has or has
not done. The things that Othello considers, then, are not his mental
states but rather facts, or alleged facts, about the world around him,
in particular about Desdemona. This argument is reinforced by
considering that motivating reasons are the reasons that would figure
as premises in a reconstruction of the agent's practical
reasoning, if any. Again, these premises are sometimes considerations
to the effect that one believes this or that; but much more often,
they are considerations about the world, about the value or goodness
of things and people around us, the means of achieving those things,
etc. In short, although practical reasoning sometimes includes
psychological facts about oneself among its premises, much more often
these premises refer to (perceived or real) facts about the world
beyond our minds.



These arguments lend substantial support to non-psychologism and
suggest that being motivated by a reason is not acting in light of, or
guided by, a mental state, or by a fact about one's mental
states. Along with other arguments, they have led many philosophers (see Alvarez 2008, 2009b, 2010; Bittner 2001; Dancy 2000, 2008; Hornsby 2007, 2008: Hyman 1999, 2015;
McDowell 2013; Raz 1999; Schueler 2003; Stout 1996; Stoutland 1998;
Williamson 2000, among others) to reject psychologism. But non-psychologism is not free from difficulties. A central problem for non-psychologism is presented by
"error cases". If motivating reasons are facts, then
*what* is the agent's reason in cases, like
Othello's, where the agent is in error and is motivated to act
by a false consideration? In such a case, what the agent would give as
his reason--say, that Desdemona has been unfaithful--is
false. So, Othello cannot act in light of the fact that Desdemona has
been unfaithful. And non-psychologism does not seem to have a ready
answer to what the motivating reason is in these cases.



Non-psychologists have offered different proposals to accommodate
error cases. One proposal is to say that in error cases agents act for
a reason that is a falsehood that the agent believes. So, in the
example above, Othello's reason is his false belief about
Desdemona. Note--not his believing that she's unfaithful,
which would bring us back to psychologism, but his false belief (the
content). According to this proposal, then, Othello did act for a
reason: a false belief, which is a putative fact that the agent takes
to be a fact. The view is defended or at least endorsed by many, among
others: Dancy (2000, 2008, 2014), Hornsby (2007, 2008), McDowell
(2013), Schroeder (2008), Setiya (2007), and Comesana and
McGrath (2014). Jennifer Hornsby defends the view in the process of
offering a disjunctive conception of a reason for acting, analogous to
McDowell's "disjunctive conception of appearances"
(Hornsby 2008: 251), summarized in the following passage:



> 
> 
> We now have the two answers to the question *What is a reason for
> acting*? Reasons for acting are given when *facts* are
> stated: let us call these "(F)-type reasons". Reasons for
> acting are given when it is said what an agent *believes*: let
> us call these "(B)-type reasons". (2008: 247)
> 



This response to problem of error cases is plausible but there are
also considerations against it. One such consideration is that stating
these alleged reasons often leads to paradox or infelicitous claims.
For many would argue that a claim such as "Ellie's reason
for stepping on your toes is that you are stepping on her toes,
although you are not stepping on her toes" is paradoxical. By
contrast, there is no air of paradox whatsoever in the corresponding
claim about Ellie's beliefs: "Ellie believes that
you're stepping on her toes although you are not". Thus,
Unger writes: 



> 
> 
> it is inconsistent to say "His reason was that the store was
> going to close, but it wasn't going to close". (1975: 208)
> 



If this is right, then the operator "her reason is that
...", unlike "her belief is that ..." is
factive: the truth of the propositions expressed by sentences formed
with "her reason is that..." requires the truth of
the proposition expressed with the "that" clause. This
response to the error cases--that a reason can be a
falsehood--is therefore problematic.



A related difficulty is that this view commits one to awkward claims
about reasons, such as Dancy's claim that one's reason for
acting may be "a reason that is no reason" (Dancy 2000: 3;
he qualifies this with the parenthesis "no good reason, that
is"), or Hornsby's claim that sometimes it is the case
that "there was no reason to do what he did, even though he did
it for a reason" (Hornsby 2008: 249; though again, she clarifies
that the first clause denies that there is an "F-type"
reason, a fact, while the second asserts that the agent *had* a
"B-type"). The awkwardness of these claims is further
supported by considerations about usage, for it seems that claims
about what someone's reason is are often retracted and qualified
on learning that the person was mistaken concerning what he or she
believed. If I say that Lisa's reason for attending the party is
that James will be there, and you tell me that he won't be at
the party, it would sound paradoxical if I insist that her reason is
that James will be at the party.



The fact that these claims about reasons are *prima facie*
paradoxical or infelicitous is not a decisive argument against the
views that generate them, but it has led some non-psychologists to
offer alternative accounts of error cases. One such alternative says
that, in error cases, an agent acts on something that he treats as a
reason and in light of which he acts but which is in fact not a
reason. So, in these cases an agent acts for an "apparent
reason" (Alvarez 2010 and Williamson forthcoming). The view is
also defended by Parfit, who characterizes apparent reasons as
follows: "We have some apparent reason when we have some belief
whose truth would give us that reason" (2001: 25). On this view,
an apparent motivating reason is not merely a bad reason but simply
not a reason. So according to this alternative, agents who act on
false beliefs are motivated by something, a false belief. They treat
that belief as a reason and are guided by it in acting. Nonetheless,
that false belief is not a motivating reason because it is not a fact,
but merely an apparent fact, and hence only an apparent reason.



It might appear that the difference between these two
non-psychological alternatives boils down to just a terminological
dispute: some philosophers choose to call these false beliefs
"false", "subjective", or "bad
reasons", etc., while others choose to call them "apparent
reasons". Surely, the thought would go, terminology is a matter
of choice and nothing of substance depends on this choice. What
matters is that every proposal contains clear definitions of how terms
are being used. A response would be that some terminological choices
are more apt than others because they reflect a more nuanced or
precise understanding of the relevant concept. The substantial issue
behind this debate seems to be whether the notion of a reason we apply
in different contexts is a unified notion. If it is, the choice
between the alternative non-psychological views outlined in the
previous paragraphs will depend largely on what features are taken to
be essential to that notion.



We noted above that most if not all accounts of acting for a
motivating reason require as a condition that the agent be in some
kind of epistemic relation to the reason that motivates her. And we
saw also that a widespread view is that this epistemic relation is one
of belief: for an agent to act for the reason that p, the agent must
believe that p. It is this thought that led many to endorse the view
that reasons are mental states (often as part of the
"desire-belief" conception of reasons for action described
above). But the view that mere belief is not sufficient to act for a
reason has gained popularity in recent years. And many have argued
that, in order to act in light of a fact that is a reason, an agent needs to
 *know* the relevant fact. The view is explicitly
defended by Unger (1975), Hyman (1999, 2011 and 2015), Williamson
(2000 and forthcoming), Hornsby (2007 and 2008 (as part of her
disjunctive conception mentioned above)), and McDowell
(2013)--but many others also endorse it. The basic idea behind
this position is that an agent may act on the basis of a belief merely
by treating that belief (i.e., what she believes) as a reason for
acting. However, if there is a fact in virtue of which her belief is
true, then she acts in light of that fact, or is guided by that fact,
only if she knows that fact. If the agent does not know the fact, we
cannot say that she was guided by it (Hyman), or that she was
responding rationally to it (McDowell). If the agent does not know the
fact, the argument goes, the relationship between the agent's
acting as she did and the fact is fortuitous, a matter of luck or
coincidence, and hence not sufficient for the fact to be her reason
for acting. And this, they argue, is so even in cases where an agent
acts motivated by a belief that is both true and justified. For just
as Gettier (1963) showed that having a justified true belief is not
sufficient for having knowledge of the corresponding fact, so, these
authors argue, acting on a justified true belief is not enough for
acting in light of the corresponding fact: the connection between the
fact and the action is fortuitous. (See entries on
 the analysis of knowledge
 and
 epistemology
 for discussions of Gettier's arguments).



Those who think that acting for a reason requires merely treating
something one believes as a ground, e.g., using it as a premise in
one's reasoning, reject this characterisation of acting for a
reason--Dancy (2011 and 2014) is an example. But defenders of the
knowledge condition complain that Dancy's remarks are
off-target. For their point is that there is a notion of acting for a
reason--arguably, the central notion--that involves the idea
of acting guided by a fact. This notion requires not mere belief but
knowledge of the fact that is a reason. Others have argued that it is,
however, possible to accept that there is this distinctive, central
notion of acting for a reason but still deny that an agent needs to
know a fact in order to act guided by it. Dustin Locke (2015), for
example, argues that it is possible for someone to act guided by a
fact that he does not know. Locke uses so-called
"fake-barn" cases to make his point against the knowledge
condition. These cases are due to Alvin Goldman (1967) who developed
them in his defence of his theory of knowledge. Suppose that a man is
driving in the countryside and sees a barn. Unbeknown to him,
he's driving in "fake-barn country", which is
littered with fake barns: barn facades designed to look like
real barns. The widely held consensus is that a person in a fake-barn
situation who, on seeing a real barn, forms the belief that there is a
barn, does not know that there is a barn, even though he has a
justified true belief to that effect. Locke uses this sort of case to
argue that a person in this situation could, for instance, drive
towards a barn guided by the fact that there is a barn over there,
without knowing that there is. If so, Locke claims, the agent acts for
the reason that there is a barn over there, since he is guided by that
fact. Nonetheless, he doesn't know that there is a barn. (For
further discussion of practical reasoning, the knowledge condition and
fake-barn situations see Hawthorne 2004, Brown 2008 and Neta
2009.)



These debates about motivating reasons focus primarily on what sort of
thing motivating reasons are and what it takes for an agent to act for
a reason. We now turn to when and how reasons explain actions.


### 3.2 Explanatory Reasons



A person's action may be explained in a variety of ways: by
reference to the agent's goal, or habits, or character traits,
or to her reasons for acting. For instance, we may say that Jess went
to the hospital in order to reassure her father, or that she went
because she always goes on Tuesdays, or because she is a dutiful
daughter, or because her father was in intensive care. These
statements explain why Jess went to the hospital because, given
certain background assumptions, they enable a third person to
understand Jess's action: they make it intelligible. In the
examples just given, the first explanation gives us Jess's goal
in going to the hospital (to reassure her father), the second and
third place her action in the context of her habits (she does it every
Tuesday) and her character (she's dutiful), respectively, and
the fourth explanation gives a reason why she did it that was
*her* reason for doing it: a reason that, from her perspective,
spoke in favour of going to the hospital (that her father was in
intensive care). Among this variety of possible explanations (and
there are more), the last one is a distinctive type that is of
particular interest here because it is an explanation of an
intentional action that rationalises the action: it explains the
action by citing the agent's reason for acting. In
Davidson's words:



> 
> 
> A reason rationalizes an action only if it leads us to see something
> the agent saw, or thought he saw, in his action--some feature,
> consequence, or aspect of the action the agent wanted, desired,
> prized, held dear, thought dutiful, beneficial, obligatory, or
> agreeable. (Davidson 1963: 685)
> 



One argument in favour of psychologism for explanatory reasons that
rationalise actions depends on the following idea. For a reason to be
able to rationalise your action, that reason must be part of your
psychology: a fact that is merely "out there" cannot
explain why you do anything. Your believing or knowing that fact, by
contrast, can explain why you act. So the reasons that explain your
actions must be mental states (believings, knowings, etc.).



It might be responded that, although a fact cannot be a reason that
explains one's action unless the person is aware of it, it does
not follow that the explanation of the action must mention their
*awareness* of the reason. For instance, we can explain why
Jess went to the hospital by citing her reason for going, namely that
her father had been admitted to the intensive care unit--this
points to something she saw in the action that made it desirable:
e.g., that she could then be with her father in this difficult moment.
The explanation does not need to mention any psychological fact, such
as the fact that she knew that her father had been admitted, even
though the explanation presupposes this fact. Against this suggestion,
a defender of psychologism for explanatory reasons might urge that
these explanations are elliptical and when fully spelled out their
explanans (the part of the explanation that does the explaining)
contains facts about what she knew or believed. But are these
explanations really elliptical? It seems undeniable that a person
cannot act for the reason that p, or on the grounds that p, unless she
stands in some epistemic relation to p: she needs to believe, know,
accept, etc. that p. However, it does not follow that all full
rationalisations need mention psychological facts and that, when they
don't, this is because they've been given in elliptical
form. Perhaps the fact that the agent knows the relevant things is
simply a necessary condition for her reason to be the explanans in a
reason explanation. Or as Dancy suggests, her knowing or believing may be an
"enabling condition" for the explanation (Dancy 2000:
127).



However that issue about rationalisations is decided, two things
should be noted. First, in "error cases"--cases when
an agent acts on the basis of a falsehood that he believes and treats
as a reason for acting--the explanans of a true explanation must
be a psychological fact. For instance, the explanation of why Othello
kills Desdemona cannot be what he believes, that Desdemona has been
unfaithful, but rather the fact that he believes it. This is because
explanations are, it is generally thought, factive: a true explanation cannot have a falsehood as its explanans: we cannot say that Othello kills Desdemona because
she has been unfaithful when she hasn't. The second thing to
note is that, even if psychologism is right for explanatory reasons
(that is, even if all reason explanations cite psychological facts),
it does not follow that psychologism is right for motivating reasons
because these reasons need not be the same. In other words, if one
attends to the distinction between the roles of motivation and
explanation that reasons can play, there should be no temptation to
move from psychologism concerning explanatory reasons in some or in
all cases, to psychologism concerning motivating reasons.



Not all opponents of psychologism accept the suggestion that
explanatory reasons in rationalisations are mental states, or facts
about them, even for error cases. For example, in his 2000 book, Dancy
denies this and argues that we can always explain an action by
specifying the reason for which it was done, even when an agent acted
on a false consideration. The problem with this view is that it
commits Dancy to the conclusion that some reason explanations are
non-factive: an explanation may be true even though what does the
explaining is not. For instance, it commits him to saying that what
explains why I took my umbrella is that it was raining, even though it
was not raining. To most philosophers this is an unacceptable
conclusion: surely true explanations require the truth of both the
explanandum (what is explained: that I took my umbrella) and the
explanans (that it was raining). In a recent paper (2014), Dancy has
abandoned his earlier view that reason explanations can be non-factive
but he still retains his opposition to psychologism for explanatory
reasons. So he still maintains that we can always explain an action by
specifying the reason for which it was done, even when the
"reason" is some falsehood that the agent believed and in
light of which he acted. In those cases, he says,



> 
> 
> we can say that what explains the action is that it was done for the
> reason that *p*, without committing ourselves to saying that
> what explains the action is that *p*. (2014: 90)
> 



He adds that in such cases the reason itself "need not be the
case and does not make the sort of distinct contribution to the
explanation that would enable us to think of it as the
explanans" (2014: 91). Philosophers may disagree about whether
this new suggestion is satisfactory. Some may think that
"Othello killed Desdemona for the reason that Desdemona had been
unfaithful to him, although she had not been unfaithful to him"
sounds paradoxical. Moreover, to say that the reason that explains an
action is (the fact) that it was done for the reason that *p*
enables Dancy to accommodate the view that explanations are factive.
But it does so at the expense of undermining his claim that the
reasons that explain are also the reasons that motivate. For Dancy
says that the reason that motivates Othello is that Desdemona is
unfaithful, while, according to this new suggestion, the reason that
explains his action (i.e., the explanans) is that *it was done for
the reason that she is unfaithful*.



Whatever one thinks about Dancy's new proposal it is worth
emphasizing again that the distinction between explanatory and
motivating reasons enables one to bypass these issues. For one can say
that the reason that explains why Othello kills Desdemona is the
psychological fact that he believes that she has been unfaithful
without accepting that that is the reason that motivates him. His
motivating reason for killing her is the putative fact that she has
been unfaithful (which, as we saw above, some would describe as merely
an apparent reason). In short, even if some form of psychologism is
right for explanatory reasons, it does not follow that it is right for
motivating reasons: the two may differ from each other in some
cases.


## 4. Conclusion



Space limitations preclude detailed examination of other debates about
practical reasons. We shall close the entry with a
brief description of a relatively new debate about reasons for action
that derives from work in the social sciences. The debate relates to
work in experimental psychology (some of it dating from the 1970s,
e.g., Nisbett and Wilson 1977) that claims to identify our "real
reasons" for acting. Briefly, experiments have shown that
factors such as the way items are presented in a situation of choice
influence people's choices without their being aware of this
influence. For example, in some of these experiments, when faced with
a choice among what in fact are identical options, agents tend to
choose the item on the right. This appears to be in fact the result of
a right-hand bias in most humans. However, since people are not aware
of this bias, when asked to justify their choice, agents cite reasons
concerning some alleged superior feature of their chosen option. These
and other phenomena, such as implicit bias (which occurs when agents
display bias based on race, gender, etc. in their behaviour, while
explicitly denying that they endorse such bias) and others, seem to show that agents
are motivated by reasons they are not aware of, and in ways that they are not aware of, even
after careful reflection on their reasons and motivations. The general
claim, then, is that these phenomena undermine many of our ordinary
and philosophical assumptions about our reasons for acting, for they
show, it is said, that agents are often ignorant of their real reasons
for acting, and as a result they often "confabulate" when
explaining and attempting to justify their behaviour (see Hirstein
2009). These conclusions, if right, would appear to threaten
fundamentally the authority we seem to enjoy about our own reasons for
acting, as well as the explanatory power of the ordinary explanations
of action that cite the agent's reasons for acting.



The plausibility of these conclusions depends to a large extent on
whether the notion of "the agent's real reason" that
these studies claim to uncover is the same as the notion of a
motivating reason that has been examined in this entry. One suggestion
might be that these so-called "real reasons" are
explanatory but not motivating reasons. And, it has been argued that,
while these explanatory reasons might make important contributions to
explaining our actions, in a variety of ways, this fact is compatible
with our ordinary psychological explanations in terms of agents'
motivating reasons. For instance, it may be that the sorts of reasons
uncovered by these experiments help explain why agents are motivated
by the reasons that they avow are their reasons for acting: the
prevalence of a right-hand bias in most humans may explain why the
item on the right seems more appealing to an agent. But this is
consistent with the truth of the agent's claim that her reason
for choosing the item is the (putative) fact that it is better than the other items
(see Sandis 2015 for
suggestions along these lines).


 
The above is an overview of a range of
problems about practical reasons and their widespread significance. It
should be sufficient to show how the problems and their many
ramifications reach into many aspects of our lives and have important
consequences for our understanding of ourselves as rational
agents.