Introduction: Persuasion Disguised as Explanation
By now, a pattern should be clearly visible. Whether we appeal to traits, dispositions, memories, beliefs, or internal representations, explanation repeatedly collapses inward. The phenomenon is relocated inside the individual, and inquiry comes to rest.
This post makes that pattern explicit. It shows that inner-cause explanations succeed not because they explain more, but because they persuade more effectively. Their resilience lies in rhetoric, not ontology.
1. How Interiorisation Persuades
Interiorisation works by exploiting deeply familiar intuitions:
Containment: Causes feel more real when they are housed in a bounded entity.
Ownership: What is “inside” a person feels properly theirs, and therefore explanatory of what they do.
Privacy: Inner causes seem authoritative because they appear insulated from contestation.
These intuitions generate confidence before any ontological work has been done.
2. Compression as Explanatory Performance
Interiorisation compresses extended relational processes into compact inner labels. Long chains of interaction, normativity, history, and coordination are replaced with:
a trait name,
a belief content,
a disposition,
a stored representation.
This compression performs explanation. It feels like depth because complexity has been mastered — when in fact it has been hidden.
3. Why Critique Slides Off
Inner-cause explanations are unusually resistant to critique because challenges are easily reabsorbed:
If behaviour varies, the trait is said to be latent.
If beliefs change, representations are said to update.
If context matters, it is treated as a trigger rather than constitutive.
The ontology never shifts. The interior remains the privileged site of cause.
4. The Moral Comfort of Interior Causes
Interiorisation also carries moral and social appeal:
Responsibility is individualised.
Accountability feels straightforward.
Explanation aligns with familiar narratives of agency.
This moral comfort further stabilises inner causes, making them feel not only explanatory but appropriate.
5. Explanation Ending Where Meaning Should Begin
The most consequential effect of interiorisation is where it stops inquiry. By locating meaning inside the individual, explanation ends precisely at the point where:
relations should be examined,
normativity should be unpacked,
coordination should be traced,
meaning should be constituted.
Persuasion replaces orientation. Naming replaces understanding.
Conclusion: Seeing the Pattern Clearly
Inner-cause explanations endure because they feel right, not because they remain answerable to the phenomenon. Their resilience is rhetorical, psychological, and moral — not ontological.
With this pattern now explicit, we are ready to examine why “inside the individual” becomes such a powerful closure site at all. The next post will explore the deeper ontological reasons for this gravitational pull inward, completing the unpicking of inner causes.
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