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We have these three flavours of reasons for action: explanatory, normative and operative. They
are, respectively, the causes of actions, the units of normative authority with respect to actions,
and the judgments on the part of the actors themselves as to their actions' causes and normative
rationales. I undertake to demonstrate that these three flavours of reasons contribute as essential
components to a Kantian conception of agency. On this conception, action is movement trained
on normative success, where the mover is aware of this success as something attempted but not
assured, something pursued by herself understood as causal apparatus that can fail in realizing its
intended effect. This self-understanding is afforded to her by her conception of herself as a mind
comprised of intentional attitudes that may misrepresent their objects. Thus, inasmuch as she is
an agent, though she must obey the dictates of her normative reasons as she finds them, she
nevertheless has recourse to attitude-citing explanations of her behaviour that reveal her efforts
to satisfy the demands that normativity makes of her, even when these efforts are frustrated or
confused.
