Justifying reasons, explanatory reasons, and whether it's ever okay to be hangry

A handy distinction

When I’m explaining what philosophy is, I like to talk to students about its questions and where they come from. One of the ways I do this is to say that philosophy gets started when someone runs into one of those moments of confusion when something utterly ordinary and familiar momentarily becomes foreign, prompting us to ask, “Wait, what really is that, anyway?” Today we’re going to talk about reasons, and in particular, my favorite distinction, which is between justifying and explanatory reasons. We’ll also need to talk about motivating reasons, but because they frequently fall into at least one of those two categories, they’re not the headliners here.

Reasons are utterly ordinary and familiar. Humans are in the business of exchanging them; reasons are a primary currency through which we make and understand our own and others’ choices. We’re able to name, consider, weigh, accept, reject, and explain reasons. This is the only sense in which I will affirm the claim that humans are rational animals.¹

What exactly is a reason, though?² Roughly, a reason is an answer to the question Why? The thing is, right out of the gate we need a distinction, because there are several different things we could be asking with this question. What was the cause or motivation for the action? How can we explain it? What (if anything) justifies it?

When justification and explanation come apart

Typically, causes or motivations help us make sense of an action, which is to say that they explain it. Consider what’s going on when it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and I get home from work only to find that the puppy has peed on the floor, I haven’t had a chance to put my stuff down or take my shoes off, and already kids are asking what’s for supper. Suppose I snap at them.³

It may not be hard to explain my cranky behavior: I’m hungry and tired, no one noticed (let alone cleaned up) the mess (which I could legitimately expect they would do), and given my physico-mental state, I’m overwhelmed by what feels like chaos. These are all reasons that make it understandable that I would be a little short-tempered. They explain my crabby reaction.

Not actually me. But definitely what I’d look like under the circumstances. Photo by Julien L on Unsplash

Do we want to say that these conditions justify (excuse) my crabby response, however? There might be room for disagreement here—I can imagine myself telling a friend in a similar position that such a response was totally justified—but given that when I’ve calmed down I will likely feel like I should apologize, I think there’s a strong case for answering that question in the negative.

So: why was Mom cranky? Because she was hangry. That condition is “the reason.” Except this reason only explains my snapping at people. It doesn’t (necessarily) justify doing so. So being hangry is (merely) an explanatory reason.

It’s worth noting that this explanation is only causal, and this is why we need to talk about motivating reasons too. We know that being tired and hungry causes people to have less patience, and there are physical and mental explanations for that. So we can understand my response from a kind of scientific standpoint: chemicals affecting us as they do, my response was predictable. But notice that I didn’t act on or for this reason. I may not have been motivated by any reason at all, really, though maybe I could claim that for a brief moment I was motivated by the desire for a little space to put my stuff down and take my shoes off, the expectation that people were paying attention to the dog, or a bit of resentment at the vaguely implied claim that I’m there to serve people dinner.

This difference between explanation and motivation suggests there are motivating reasons alongside justifying and explanatory ones. Motivating reasons are the ones I take myself to have when I’m acting deliberately. They typically help explain an action. When I act on a reason, I believe that my consideration justifies my action. I could be wrong about that, though: I may not have the facts straight, or I may be mistaken about their counting in favor of my choice. I might take a drink from a glass of clear liquid, believing it to be water, but find that it’s actually vodka.⁴ My motivating reason is that there’s water in the glass, and that would justify my sip, but whoops! Motivating reasons don’t always justify.

So:

• explanatory reasons help us make sense of an action (after the fact);

• motivating reasons are the ones we act on;

• justifying reasons count in favor of our actions.

Most of the time, we don’t need to think carefully about this distinction because they’re all the same. Why do I eat fruit and yogurt and oatmeal for breakfast? Because they’re healthy and nutritious and yummy and comforting. We’ll come back to yummy and comforting, but start with healthy and nutritious: these factors motivate, justify, and (therefore) explain my choice. Being nutritious is an explanation because the food’s being good for me makes my motivation to eat it understandable, and it’s a justification because being healthy and nutritious supports eating those breakfast items. In this case, the justification also serves as both the motivation and the explanation: I choose fruit because its being good for me justifies the choice, and I’m motivated by that justification. And this makes sense.

Photo by Sara Cervera on Unsplash

My breakfast choices’ being yummy and comforting could also fall under justification, though this is interestingly complicated. Yumminess and comfort are easily understood as motivating reasons: why do I eat fruit? Because it’s delicious. I’m motivated by liking it. And liking it seems like a justification too. Cheetos are likewise yummy and comforting, however, and that definitely motivates and explains my eating them, but in this case, do we want to say that the yumminess and the comfort are justifying reasons? If you find yourself hesitating here, that might be because they seem to justify eating food when it’s healthy, but not when it isn’t. What gives?

This has to do with the way reasons interact. All else held equal, a food’s being yummy counts in favor of eating it.⁵ But in the case of junk food, the fact that it’s bad for you makes the cases unequal, and often—though not always, because sometimes a treat is a good thing—the junkiness of the food is a reason against eating it that outweighs the yumminess that favors eating it. We do this kind of weighing all the time without thinking about it.

Cases where our behavior can be explained even when it isn’t justified are the most common way justifying and explanatory reasons come apart. Just to be thorough, though, it’s worth pointing out that they can come apart the other way too: there can be cases where there are justifying reasons for an action that don’t explain it. Consider a politican who spends a few hours serving at a soup kitchen but only because they want to look good as an election approaches: this is their motivating reason, and it explains the action. There are good—justifying—reasons to serve in a soup kitchen (such as, it feeds people who wouldn’t otherwise eat), but since the politician isn’t operating on those reasons in any direct way, they aren’t part of the explanation for the politican’s choice.

To sum this all up: when analyzing an action, we can distinguish explanatory, motivating, and justifying reasons. A lot of the time these are the same. The point, however, is that reasons that explain our actions don’t always justify them as well, as my hangry example illustrates. So next time someone gives you a lame excuse, you can annoy them clarify the situation by saying that their excuse might explain their bad choice, but it doesn’t justify it. Philosophy FTW.

1. I will emphatically not affirm the claim that we are or should be rational animals in the sense usually meant in fields like behavioral economics and decision theory, or any context that makes emotions out to be irrational. Emotions are mostly quite rational in the sense of responding to (justifying) reasons.

When I concede the claim that humans are rational, I do not mean that we’re logic machines, and I definitely don’t mean that we should be. What I mean is that we seek and respond—however imperfectly—to reasons, which come from many sources and which interact in complex ways that are difficult to pin down clearly.

2. I’ll limit myself to actions here, since I want to talk about humans. Events that are not also actions also have causes and explanations, but usually not justifications, and for present purposes we’ll leave events to the scientists to explain.

3. I mean, I never would of course, but just suppose for the sake of argument. Hypothetically speaking. In a different possible world but never this one.

4. Why there’s a glass of plain vodka sitting around, I don’t know, but go with me here.

5. Philosophers’ jargon for this is a pro tanto reason.