On the Alleged Debate on Whether Reasons are Facts or Attitudes

It is common to read that there is a debate on whether reasons are facts or attitudes. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistaken assessment of the situation. There is no such disagreement. Those that hold that reasons are attitudes are not employing the term "reason" in the same sense as those that hold that reasons are facts. I argue for this by assessing two arguments that proponents of the claim that reasons are facts make against the claim that reasons are attitudes, and I interpret them as showing us not that this latter claim is wrong, but that it should not be understood in the way that it is understood in those arguments. While there is no substantial disagreement on whether reasons are facts or attitudes, there is a deep disagreement about what explains an action done for a reason. I finish by showing that both accounts of what explains actions have problems.