Reframing practical reasons through reasoning

My aim in this paper is to challenge reasons internalism. I maintain reasons are facts, and they justify actions by pointing out good/right-making features of an action. However, internalist intuitions are not entirely unfounded. I will argue that the internalist intuition about the relationship between reasons and rationality has its source in the structure of practical reasoning. I will first argue that by focusing on practical reasoning and acknowledging reasons are but one element within practical reasoning, the motivation to claim the status of reasons depends on one's motivational profile is lost. I will then argue that reasons, when they are understood as justifying elements within practical reasoning, can be separated from their putative rational requirement role in our more quotidian responses to reasons ungrounded in practical reasoning. Finally, I will argue that by conceiving of reasons in practical reasoning as the factual content of agents' beliefs, a more plausible, and familiar view of what actually explains our reasoned actions is reinvigorated.