Reason (argument)

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In philosophy and argumentation, a reason is a consideration that counts in favor of a conclusion, action, attitude or fact, or that explains why something is so. Reasons typically answer a why? question and are often introduced by expressions such as because, since, as, in virtue of, or in order to. They are central to accounts of practical reason, epistemic justification, moral evaluation, and everyday explanation, and they figure prominently in law and deliberative discourse.

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Philosophers commonly distinguish three roles for reasons. Normative (or justifying) reasons are considerations that count in favor of responding one way rather than another (e.g., that it is raining is a reason to take an umbrella). Motivating reasons are the considerations in light of which an agent acts—what the agent treats as counting in favor at the time, whether or not it in fact does. Explanatory reasons cite what explains an event or action; when agents are involved, these often refer to psychological states (for example, that someone believed they were late explains why they ran).

Debates concern what reasons are and how they work. Some hold that normative reasons are facts (or true propositions) rather than mere beliefs; others link them more closely to an agent's perspective. Reasons are said to play both a deontic role (helping to determine what one ought, may, or must do) and a deliberative role (serving as appropriate inputs to sound deliberation and, when taken up, becoming motivating reasons). Further questions include whether acting rightly must be done for the right reasons to have moral worth, and how normative and motivating reasons are related when guidance is difficult (for example, in surprise-party or akratic cases).

The literature also distinguishes epistemic reasons (which count in favor of believing a proposition) from practical reasons (which count in favor of actions or attitudes), and asks whether there is a unified treatment of both—e.g., by understanding reasons as a kind of evidence. Disputes about the source of practical reasons are framed as internalism versus externalism: internalists tie a person's reasons to their actual or idealized motivational set (sometimes in broadly Humean terms), while externalists allow that there can be reasons independent of an agent's present motivations. A separate contrast between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons concerns whether the content of a reason makes essential reference to the agent (as with special obligations to one's child) or not (as with impartial welfare considerations).

Because agents often face multiple, context-sensitive considerations, contemporary work analyzes how reasons are weighed, defeated, or enabled. Proposals address holism about reasons, pairwise and contrastive frameworks for permissibility, possible incommensurability or parity among options, and distinctions between justifying and requiring strengths. Related topics include exclusionary (higher-order) reasons that bar acting for certain first-order reasons, and questions about aggregating overlapping considerations. These issues connect the concept of a reason to broader discussions in ethics, rational choice, epistemology, and the theory of argument.

Types of reason

Many contemporary accounts start from a threefold classification. [1] [2]

Normative (justifying) reasons
Normative reasons are considerations that count in favor of a response—e.g., that it is raining is a reason to take an umbrella; that a joke will humiliate someone is a reason not to tell it. [3] Normative reasons are often taken to be facts, or (on related views) true propositions. [4] [5]
Motivating reasons
Motivating reasons are the considerations in light of which an agent acts—what the agent treats as counting in favor at the time of action. [6] [7] They need not be good reasons (one can act for a bad or merely apparent reason).
Explanatory reasons
Explanatory reasons cite what explains an event or action. When agents are involved, explanations often mention psychological states (for example, that someone believed they would miss their train explains why they ran). [8]

Normative reasons

Roles: deontic and deliberative

Normative reasons play at least two roles. In their deontic role, they help settle what one ought/must/may do by weighing reasons for and against actions. [9] [10] In their deliberative role, they are the appropriate inputs to sound deliberation and can become motivating reasons when an agent responds to them. [11]

Ontology and objectivity

A common view holds that normative reasons are facts, not merely beliefs; some identify them with true propositions, others with worldly states of affairs. [12] [13] Authors also distinguish between objective reasons (the facts that count for/against an act) and subjective or apparent reasons (considerations within an agent's epistemic perspective that make acting seem reasonable). [14] [15]

What it is for a fact to be a reason

Competing characterizations include:

Weighing, defeat, and constraints

Reason-weighing is often modeled by metaphors of weight/strength, but holism, context-sensitivity, and incommensurability complicate simple additive pictures. [20] [21] Some argue for epistemic constraints on the reasons relevant to what one ought to do (the perspectivist idea that only what falls within one's perspective can determine one's ought), while others retain an objective ought sensitive to all the facts. [22] [23] Classic puzzle cases (e.g., unforeseeable harms) illustrate the tension. [24]

Motivating and explanatory reasons

Philosophers distinguish an agent's motivating reason from the fact that explains their action. For example, Othello kills Desdemona for the (false) consideration that she was unfaithful (motivating reason), while what explains his action includes that he believed she was unfaithful (explanatory reason). [25] [26]

What kind of thing is a motivating reason?

Debate centers on whether motivating reasons are:

A widely discussed constraint says that one must be able to act for a good reason; this pressures psychologism if mental states as such cannot be good reasons. [31] There is also debate over the epistemic condition for acting in the light of a fact—some argue that mere true belief is insufficient and that knowledge is required; [32] [33] others resist this requirement. [34]

Guise theses

On guise of the good/guise of reasons views, acting for a reason involves taking a consideration as favoring the action (seeing something to be said for it). [35] [36] Alleged counterexamples (anger, akrasia, evil be my good) have prompted refinements (e.g., appealing to how things seem good at the time). [37]

The relation between normative and motivating reasons

A natural idea is that normative reasons are supposed to guide us. This is developed as: a deliberative condition (we ought to be moved by them), an ability condition (they must be able to move us), or a combined condition (we can be moved by them via sound deliberation). [38] [39] Puzzles about self-effacing reasons (e.g., surprise-party cases) challenge simple guidance theses and motivate careful distinctions between deontic and deliberative roles. [40] [41]

Acting for a normative reason and moral worth

Sometimes one does the right thing but not for the right reason (e.g., rescuing a child for praise). Many hold that moral worth/credit requires acting for the very reasons that make the action right—or from the right kind of concern or normative knowledge. [42] [43] [44]

Epistemic versus practical reasons

Philosophers distinguish capacities of theoretical (epistemic) and practical reason. Epistemic reasons (evidential reasons) count in favor of believing a proposition; practical reasons count in favor of actions or attitudes. [45] Some propose a unified treatment—e.g., that reasons are a kind of evidence across domains. [46] In argumentation, a reason may be a premise (or set of co-premises) supporting a conclusion; explanatory reasons can clarify how something could be true without by themselves showing that it is true.

Internalism and externalism about practical reasons

In debates about practical reason, philosophers ask whether there is a necessary connection between an agent's normative reasons and the agent's motivation. Reasons internalism (a family of views) holds that for a consideration to be a reason for an agent, it must stand in some privileged relation to facts about that agent's motivation or motivational psychology; reasons externalism denies any such necessary connection. [47] [48] [49] Although framed about action, these positions bear on broader issues about normativity, rationality, and moral obligation.

Varieties

Scholars distinguish several axes along which internalist theses vary.

Motivation vs. state views
Motivation views tie reasons to what an agent is (or would be) motivated to do; state views tie reasons to the agent's having certain desire-like states (desires, emotions, intentions) that play a role in motivation. [50] [51]
Actual vs. counterfactual conditions
Actual versions require present motivation or a present desire that would be served by the act. Counterfactual versions require only that, under certain idealizations—e.g., full information, successful cognitive psychotherapy, ideal deliberation, practical rationality, or full virtue—one would be motivated or have the relevant desire. [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57]
Direction of explanation
Some internalists claim we have reasons because we have (actual or counterfactual) motivation/desire—often associated with Humean views; others reverse the order, holding that ideally rational agents are motivated because there are reasons to which rationality is responsive. [58] [59]

The Humean theory and a central tension

A prominent actual-state thesis is the Humean Theory of Reasons (HTR): one has a reason to perform an action only if doing it would serve some actual desire of one's own. [60] It is commonly paired with the Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM) that desires are necessary and beliefs not sufficient for motivation. [61] Critics argue that HTR conflicts with two widely held assumptions: moral rationalism (that moral wrongness entails a reason not to act) and moral absolutism (that some acts are wrong for anyone). Together these suggest there are reasons independent of an agent's actual desires. [62] Responses include rejecting absolutism or rationalism (e.g., forms of relativism or error theory), or weakening internalism to counterfactual forms that do not depend on an agent's present psychology. [63] [64]

Arguments and objections

Motivational/explanatory links
A classical route to internalism starts from the idea that reasons are tied to explanation: the reasons for which we act can explain action. [65] One influential line (often attributed to Williams) infers HTR by combining a counterfactual link between reasons and possible motivation with HTM; critics dispute both HTM and the key "possibility" premise. [66] [67] [68] Alternative readings take Williams to be offering an explanatory constraint rather than a conceptual equivalence, with corresponding implications for internalism. [69]
Analogy to theoretical reason
Externalists point to epistemic reasons (for belief), which seem independent of desire, and argue that practical reasons should be similar; internalists reply either by extending internalism to belief or by marking deep differences between action and belief. [70] [71] [72] [73]
Reactive attitudes
Appeals to blame and related attitudes aim to show that moral fault presupposes the agent had sufficient reason not to act, pushing toward external reasons; internalists respond by stressing fairness/ability constraints or by treating blame as sometimes proleptic (helping to create reasons by shaping motivations). [74] [75] [76] [77]
The "conditional fallacy"
Counterfactual internalisms can misclassify reasons when the very idealization that's supposed to reveal motivation would remove the reason (e.g., cases where an agent's irrational disposition itself gives a reason to avoid a situation). "Advice" models—asking what one's fully rational counterpart would want one's actual self to do—aim to avoid this problem. [78] [79] [80] [81]

Extensional (case-based) considerations

Critics argue internalist theses can undergenerate reasons: e.g., we seem to have prudential reasons now (to study for a trip we'll later regret being unprepared for) even if we presently lack supporting desires; internalists reply with overdetermination strategies or by challenging the data. [82] [83] Conversely, simple desire-based views appear to overgenerate (mud-drinking, blade-counting); internalists often treat desire as a necessary but not sufficient condition, or else appeal to background standards filtering which desires yield reasons. [84] [85]

Contemporary landscape

Recent work explores whether counterfactual internalisms can avoid triviality without reverting to actual psychology, and whether externalist accounts can explain both categorical moral reasons and the everyday desire-sensitivity of many reasons; anthologies collect competing approaches and clarifications. [86]

Agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons

Scholars often distinguish between agent-neutral and agent-relative normative reasons—two patterns by which considerations favor actions. On a classic principle-based view, a reason is agent-neutral when the associated principle contains no non-trivial reference to the agent for whom it is a reason; it is agent-relative when such reference is essential to the reason-giving condition. [87] [88] [89] Thus, impartial welfare-maximizing considerations are standardly treated as agent-neutral, whereas egoistic reasons or special-relationship reasons (e.g., to help one's own child) are agent-relative.

Alternative formulations

Other ways of drawing the line have been proposed. On a reason-statement approach, a reason is agent-relative iff a full statement of that reason must use pronominal back-reference to the very agent for whom it is a reason (e.g., "that it is in his interest"). [90] A different, perspective-based approach ties neutrality to whether reasons can be recognized from suitably objective standpoints, and takes some reasons (e.g., nearest-and-dearest) to be appreciable only from more first-personal perspectives. [91] Each formulation faces pressures: the reason-statement view depends on contentious assumptions about irreducibly indexical facts, while the perspective view makes classification hinge on controversial theses about objectivity.

Default principles, holism, and particularism

Many hold that reasons are holistic and context-sensitive: what counts in favor in one case may be silenced or reversed in another by defeaters; some background conditions are mere enablers rather than reasons themselves. [92] [93] To accommodate this holism while retaining the clarity of the principle-based distinction, some theorists use default principles—hedged generalizations that say, roughly, "F is a reason for p to φ unless some feature of the situation explains why not." On this picture, neutrality vs relativity turns on whether the reason-clause contains a non-trivial free agent variable (e.g., "p's pleasure"). [94] Objections that such principles are vacuous are answered by noting that the "feature of the situation" is constrained to be contingent, not any necessary truth, so the hedging does real explanatory work rather than trivializing the claim. [95]

Several nearby distinctions are sometimes conflated with the agent-neutral/agent-relative divide:

Significance for normative theory

The distinction structures debates about consequentialism and deontology. Deontic constraints can be modeled via agent-relative (often time-relative) teleological reasons, a strategy used to "consequentialize" deontological theories in structural terms. [102] It also highlights surprising asymmetries—e.g., maximizing expected utility can introduce agent-relativity via whose expectations count. The distinction has been central in work on expressivism about normativity, [103] and in Kantian attempts to vindicate deontic prohibitions without agent-relative value. [104] [105]

Many theorists analyze how multiple considerations interact to determine what is permissible, required, or best by appealing to the weighing of reasons. On this approach, reasons function as direct contributors to a verdict, while various contextual features can indirectly enable, disable, amplify, or attenuate the relevance of those reasons. [106] [107] [108]

Pairwise frameworks and contrastivism

A widely discussed template—sometimes called Monist Pairwise Permissibility—says an option φ is permissible iff, for each alternative, the reasons for φ are not outweighed by the reasons for that alternative. This treats permissibility as a "tournament" of pairwise comparisons rather than a free-for-all among all reasons at once. [109] [110] Within this framework, some defend contrastive reasons, whose weight (or applicability) varies with the specific alternative under consideration (e.g., a reason for φ against option A may not be a reason for φ against option B). Contrastivism has been developed for practical and epistemic cases and used to explain puzzling triads like Kamm's "Café or Kid" case, where what competes with promise-keeping changes once a third option (saving a child at severe personal cost) is introduced. [109] [111]

For-and-against, option individuation, and maximalism

On one influential view, talk of a "reason against" φ just is talk of a "reason for" some specified alternative to φ in the same pairwise contest; which locution we use depends on explanatory emphasis. [112] [109] How we individuate options matters to weighing. Maximalism holds that reasons fundamentally apply to maximal, mutually exclusive and exhaustive options (fully specified acts), and that permissibility for coarser options derives from verdicts about these maximal ones. [113] [114] [115]

Holism, conditions, and modifiers

Against atomism (which treats a consideration's status/strength as invariant across contexts), holism claims that context can change whether something is a reason at all (via enablers/disablers) or how weighty it is (via amplifiers/attenuators). Examples include coerced promises (disablers) and special relationships (amplifiers of reasons to aid one's child). [116] [107] [117] [108]

Incommensurability, parity, and moral options

To explain widespread and stable cases where more than one option is permissible (moral "options"), some reject strict trichotomy (heavier/lighter/equal) and allow parity: two options can be comparable without being precisely equal; small improvements need not break parity. [118] [119] Others worry parity alone cannot preserve permissible partiality or supererogation if permissibility is still pairwise and monistic. [120]

Weight pluralism (justifying vs. requiring)

An alternative is Weight Pluralism: reasons have at least two distinct weights—justifying (good at making an action permissible) and requiring (good at making alternatives impermissible, hence making the action required). On the Pluralist Pairwise view, φ is permissible iff φ's justifying weight is not outweighed by rivals' requiring weight. This promises stable, ubiquitous options and a tidy explanation of permissible partiality and supererogation. [121] [122] [123] [106]

Some pluralists rank betterness among permissible options by requiring weight ("Simple Betterness"), while others posit a third, "favoring/merit-conferring/erogatory" dimension to handle "ought-as-best." [124] [125] [114]

Supererogation and "ought as best"

On one usage, ought tracks the best permissible option, not merely the required one; this separates ranking from permissibility and helps locate supererogation (doing better than some permissible alternative without being required). Competing proposals ground this ranking in requiring weight or in a distinct favoring/merit dimension. [114] [126] [127]

Exclusionary and higher-order reasons

Beyond first-order weighing, some defend exclusionary reasons—higher-order reasons not to act for certain first-order reasons (e.g., a promise to ignore self-interest in a decision). Critics worry this divorces "all-things-considered" action from the first-order balance, but defenders argue such reasons structure rational deliberation in law and practical life. [128] [129] In epistemology, some interpret certain higher-order evidence (e.g., risk of reasoning impairment) as excluding one's first-order evidence from justifying belief even if it remains evidence in a purely evidential sense. [130] [131]

Aggregation of reasons

Simple additive models face two challenges: (i) derivative reasons (e.g., heat and rain each count against running, but together they may be less bad) and (ii) overlapping fundamental reasons (e.g., "pain" and "severe pain" shouldn't double-count). Contemporary views often restrict addition to non-overlapping fundamental reasons for maximal options, holding fixed the relevant conditions/modifiers. [132] [108] [133] [134]

Conflicts between normative perspectives

Sometimes morality, prudence, and epistemic rationality deliver conflicting verdicts. One family of views posits a supreme perspective whose weighing settles what one ought to do simpliciter; others endorse normative pluralism: several perspectives have authority but no single, integrated court of appeal. The literature explores whether differences between (say) altruistic and self-interested reasons are best handled by parity, pluralist weights, or pluralism about perspectives. [135] [136] [137] [138] [139] [140]

See also

References

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