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A reason is a consideration which justifies or explains.〔(Merriam-Webster.com ) Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of reason〕 Reasons are what people appeal to when making arguments about what people should do or believe. (Those are reasons in the normative sense.) For example, the fact that a doctor's patient is grimacing is a reason to believe the patient is in pain. The fact that the patient is in pain is a reason for the doctor to do things to alleviate the pain. In another sense of the term, reasons are explanations of why things happened. (These are reasons in the explanatory sense.) For example, the reason the patient is in pain is that her nerves are sending signals from her tissues to her brain. A reason, in many cases, is brought up by the question "''why?''", and answered following the word "''because.''" Additionally, words and phrases like: ''since'', ''due to'', ''as'', ''considering'' (''that''), ''a result'' (''of''), and ''in order to'', for example, all serve as explanatory locutions that precede the reason to which they refer. ==Normative vs. explanatory reasons== Normative reasons (AKA ''justifying reasons'') are often said to be "considerations which count in favor" of some state of affairs (this is, at any rate, a common view, notably held by T. M. Scanlon and Derek Parfit).〔Scanlon, T.M. ''What We Owe To Each Other.'' Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1998. p. 17.〕 Explanatory reasons are considerations which serve to explain why things have happened—they are ''reasons'' events occur, or why states of affairs are the way they are. In other words, "reason" can also be a synonym for "cause". For example, a reason a car starts is that its ignition is turned. In the context of explaining the actions of beings who act for reasons (i.e., rational agents), these are called ''motivating reasons''—e.g., the reason Bill went to college was to learn; i.e., that he would learn was his motivating reason. At least where a rational agent is acting rationally, her motivating reasons are those considerations which she believes count in favor of her so acting. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reason (argument)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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