A choice is an undetermined mental action, and when we make choices we typically explain our making them in terms of reasons, where a reason is a purpose, end, or goal for choosing. A reason is a conceptual entity, what medieval thinkers called an ens rationis (literally "object of reason") or intentional object, which is about or directed at the future and optative in mood (expressing a wish that the world be a certain way that is good). To put this point in technical terms, while a reason is not a desire or a belief, its optative character stems from its being grounded in the content of a desire or belief that represents a future state of affairs as good and something to be brought about by a more temporally proximate chosen action of the person who has the desire or belief. An explanation of a choice in terms of a reason or purpose is a teleological explanation.
Stewart Goetz;Charles Taliaferro.
Naturalism (Kindle Locations 348-353). Kindle Edition.
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