An early and highly influential source of the skepticism concerning the causal relevance of our reasons is a theoretical review by Nisbett and Wilson (1977). This article reports numerous experiments and studies in which participants appear to construct or confabulate rationalizing explanations by giving reasons that could not possibly have been the reasons they acted for. Despite some rather serious methodological problems (White 1988), this research has achieved and retained the status of textbook knowledge within psychology and cognitive science. Moreover, it has been taken to show that ordinary reason explanations are not causal explanations, even though the authors themselves rejected this conclusion. On their view, the evidence shows, first and foremost, that verbal reports of mental states are based on self-interpretation (theorizing or rationalization), rather than on direct or introspective access. They noted that this epistemic view is perfectly compatible with the assumption that we can and often do give the actual causes of our actions when we give an ordinary reason explanation. The upshot is that, even if the proposed epistemic view is correct, there is nothing in the evidence which shows that reason explanations cannot be causal explanations, and there is nothing in the evidence which shows that reason explanations are usually not causal explanations.