When we offer reasons for a belief or an action we prompt the audience to recognize authorities (of facts, of shared observations, of commonly held principles etc.). This recognition seems to be constitutive of the very state we find ourselves in when we have or accept reasons. On the other hand, often we are inclined to say that either we have or we don't have reasons for something; we sound as if in case we have reasons, their acceptance is compulsory. Sometimes, when we move in the space of reasons we have the impression that reasons are already there, that they are independent from our best judgment and we should rather learn to be sensitive to their claim. In this paper I consider realism about reasons as a way of stating externalism and I then examine connections between externalism in semantics and in epistemology. I argue that a realism about reasons could make use of a Davidsonian strategy to put together the idea that reasons are in the world with the conception according to which recognition is part of what constitutes a reason.
Reasons; externalism; Annerkenung; Davidson