 If this way of understanding talk about different kinds of reasons is right, perhaps the picture is more complex than the dichotomy of “normative vs. motivating” suggests. For there seem to be at least three distinct questions about the relation between reasons and actions. There are questions about whether there is a reason that favours someone’s action; questions about what reason motivates someone to act; and also questions about what reasons explain his action. Consider the behaviour of Othello in Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Othello kills Desdemona in the belief, induced by Iago, that she has been unfaithful to him. The tragedy, however, is that she has not: Desdemona is innocent, she loves Othello and is faithful to him. Clearly, there is no reason that justifies the murder: no normative reason. But there are two things we can say about Othello’s reason for acting and his action. One is that Othello is motivated to kill Desdemona by the (putative) fact that Desdemona has been unfaithful. The other is that we can explain his action of killing her by citing the fact that he believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful. So here we seem to have two different reasons: one that motivates—the (putative) fact that Desdemona has been unfaithful; and one that explains—the (actual) fact that Othello believes that she has. We can distinguish, then, between the reason that explains Othello’s action (the fact that he believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful) and the reason that motivates him to act (the alleged infidelity itself). It might be tempting to think that Othello’s motivating reason is just the fact that he believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful. We shall examine below reasons why the temptation should be resisted. Because of this, the account that follows proceeds by dividing reasons for action initially into two categories: normative and motivating-explanatory. It will then present the case for treating motivating and explanatory reasons separately.