Why reasons and reasoning don’t come apart

Abstract

Abstract In recent years several philosophers have proposed what has come to be called the Reasoning View of normative reasons, according to which normative reasons are premises of sound reasoning. The reasoning view has come under some criticism, which chiefly consists in counterexamples that purport to show that something can be a premise of sound reasoning without intuitively being a normative reason, or can be a normative reason without being a premise of sound reasoning. I here consider and reject three examples that were recently put forward. Discussing them will allow me to clarify the Reasoning View in important respects.