Against Inner Causes: 3 Stored Meanings and Internal Representations

Introduction: When Meaning Is Treated as a Thing

If traits and dispositions feel explanatory because they promise stability, stored meanings and internal representations feel explanatory because they promise content. Beliefs, memories, intentions, and knowledge appear to live inside individuals as ready-made items that can be retrieved to explain action.

This post shows how such appeals create the impression of explanation while quietly bypassing the relational dynamics that actually constitute meaning.

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1. The Intuitive Appeal of Stored Meaning

When asked why someone acted as they did, it feels natural to answer:

• because they believed something,

• because they remembered something,

• because they intended something.

These explanations feel deep because they invoke meaningful content rather than mere behaviour. They seem to respect agency and understanding.

But notice the move: meaning is treated as a thing possessed rather than as a relation enacted.

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2. Representation as a Closure Site

Internal representations function as powerful closure devices because they appear to complete the explanatory circuit:

The action occurred because the representation was present.

Once the representation is named, inquiry stops. We are no longer asked:

• how the belief was formed in relation,

• how it is sustained or contested,

• how it functions differently across contexts,

• how it is made intelligible in practice.

The explanation ends where meaning should begin.

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3. Memory Without Situation

Memory is often invoked as a stored record that explains present behaviour. Yet memory only becomes meaningful in situation:

• what is recalled depends on context,

• what matters depends on interaction,

• what counts as relevant depends on current relations.

Treating memory as an internal archive mistakes availability for explanation. The relational work that makes memory operative disappears from view.

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4. Beliefs as Answers Instead of Orientations

Beliefs are frequently used as explanatory endpoints:

She acted that way because she believes X.

But beliefs do not explain action by themselves. They require:

• normative environments,

• shared practices of justification,

• situational uptake and recognition.

When belief is treated as a self-sufficient inner cause, explanation collapses into naming.

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5. Why Internal Meaning Feels So Convincing

Stored meanings feel explanatory because they:

• preserve a sense of agency,

• align with introspective experience,

• fit comfortably with individualist ontology,

• promise access to reasons without examining relations.

Their power is rhetorical: they sound like reasons while functioning as closures.

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6. Preparing the Next Unpicking

By now a pattern is visible. Whether traits, dispositions, or stored meanings, inner causes operate by:

• relocating explanation inside the individual,

• compressing relational processes into internal labels,

• terminating inquiry prematurely.

In the next post, we will make this pattern explicit by examining The Rhetoric of Interiorisation — how explanation is persuaded, not demonstrated.

Against Inner Causes: 2 Traits and Dispositions as Closure Devices

Introduction: When Regularity Feels Like Explanation

Traits and dispositions are the most familiar examples of inner causes. Personality, temperament, and instinctive tendencies seem to provide ready-made explanations: they are identifiable, seemingly stable, and easily invoked. Yet their apparent explanatory power often arises from how they function rhetorically rather than ontologically.

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1. Traits as Anchors of Predictability

Traits give the impression of predictive security. If someone is considered extroverted, we anticipate sociable behaviour across contexts. If someone is described as aggressive, we expect certain patterns of action. This feels explanatory because it offers an internal “handle” to grasp the phenomenon.

However, the predictive sense is derived from statistical regularities, not from a mechanism that necessitates the behaviour. The trait functions as a placeholder for relational dynamics that are distributed across interactions and situations.

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2. Dispositions and the Seduction of Stability

Dispositions, like tendencies or proclivities, appear to exist independently of context. Their solidity is seductive:

• They are framed as enduring properties.

• They can be measured, catalogued, and named.

• They appear to unify diverse behaviours under a single label.

This stability gives the illusion of sufficiency: once the disposition is identified, explanation is felt to be complete.

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3. The Rhetorical Function of Habitual Patterns

Repeated behaviours or habits further consolidate explanatory authority. The observation that someone “always acts this way” becomes an internal justification. Repetition is mistaken for causal depth; regularity is mistaken for necessity.

The explanatory power is therefore performative: it produces conviction in the observer, even though it does not account for the relational processes sustaining the behaviour.

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4. When Closure Feels Natural

Traits and dispositions are powerful closure devices because they:

• Reduce complex interactions to a single, identifiable locus.

• Align with the intuition that explanations should be compact and bounded.

• Reassure by presenting behaviour as internally grounded rather than emergent from relational contexts.

The ease and confidence with which we invoke internal dispositions make closure psychologically compelling.

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5. Preparing for the Next Step

Understanding how traits and dispositions function rhetorically sets the stage for examining stored meanings and internal representations. These too act as closure devices, giving the appearance of explanation while masking the relational structures that actually sustain phenomena.

In the next post, we will explore how memory, beliefs, and symbolic knowledge contribute to the seductive power of inner causes.

Against Inner Causes: 1 Introduction: The Allure of Inner Causes

Introduction: Explanations that Feel Complete

Human beings naturally search for explanations that satisfy. One of the most persistent and seductive strategies is to locate causes inside the individual: traits, dispositions, internal representations, or stored meanings. From personality to instincts to beliefs, it seems we have found a compact, tidy locus of understanding.

This post examines why such inner causes are so alluring and sets the stage for revealing their limitations.

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1. Why Internalism Feels Explanatory

Locating causality inside an individual feels immediately compelling:

• Accessibility: The explanation seems tangible. Traits and dispositions can be described, measured, or observed.

• Economy: A single locus can appear to account for many phenomena. “She acted this way because of X” seems simple and decisive.

• Predictive Promise: Internal causes appear stable. If a trait or disposition is identified, it promises to forecast behaviour across contexts.

Together, these features produce the sensation that the phenomenon is understood — even when critical relational dimensions are ignored.

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2. The Seductive Authority of the Interior

The interior feels authoritative because it is fixed. Unlike social interactions, environmental contingencies, or emergent relations, internal traits appear enduring and insulated. This solidity gives internalist explanations a pseudo-objective weight.

Moreover, the individual as a bounded entity is psychologically and rhetorically convenient. It is easier to attribute causality to what is “there” than to what is distributed across networks, histories, and interactions.

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3. Where Misleading Closure Emerges

Internalist explanations close inquiry in subtle ways:

• They concentrate attention inside the individual, sidelining context and relational structure.

• They suggest sufficiency: once the trait or disposition is identified, further questioning feels redundant.

• They transform description of internal state into explanation of behaviour, bypassing the relational and contingent processes that sustain phenomena.

Closure emerges not from demonstration, but from the felt authority of the interior.

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4. Preparing for Ontological Unpicking

The purpose of this series is not to deny that traits, dispositions, or stored meanings exist. Rather, it is to show that their explanatory power is often rhetorical rather than ontological. They give the appearance of closure while leaving key relations unexamined.

In the next post, we will examine Traits and Dispositions as Closure Devices, exposing precisely how these internal features function to end inquiry prematurely while seeming explanatory.

What Counts as an Explanation?: 6 A New Standard for Explanation

Introduction: Bringing the Lessons Together

After examining why explanations feel convincing, the hidden criteria that guide us, and the practice of re-entry, it is time to synthesise. The goal is not to impose a new dogma or definitive method, but to articulate a standard that preserves openness and relational intelligibility.

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1. Explanation as Orientation

The central principle is that explanation should orient rather than close. An explanation that satisfies the new standard:

• clarifies relevant relations,

• highlights contingencies and dependencies,

• invites re-engagement with the phenomenon,

• makes explicit its assumptions and limits.

Orientation ensures that understanding remains alive, provisional, and context-sensitive.

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2. Depth in Service of Intelligibility

Causal depth is valuable only insofar as it enhances understanding in the present.

The standard insists:

• Depth must illuminate, not merely narrate.

• Reach and scope should serve relational insight, not impress with completeness.

• The chain of causes should remain answerable to the phenomenon.

Depth becomes a tool for orientation, not a substitute for it.

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3. Re-entry as Criterion

A good explanation is always open to re-entry:

• anomalies, exceptions, and variation are signals, not errors to be ignored,

• new observations can refine or challenge the account,

• measures, models, and formal tools remain provisional, not final authorities.

Re-entry guarantees that explanation is an ongoing conversation rather than a verdict.

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4. Transparency and Reflexivity

The standard demands transparency about assumptions and reflexivity about the observer’s role:

• What is taken for granted?

• How do familiar narratives or authority shape the account?

• What aspects of the phenomenon are being bracketed, and why?

These practices prevent over-closure and maintain connection with the phenomenon.

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5. Integrating Criteria Without Closure

The new standard is not a checklist or formula. It is a habit of attention:

• orient to the phenomenon,

• use depth and tools wisely,

• preserve re-entry,

• be transparent and reflexive.

It replaces habitual conviction with disciplined responsiveness.

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Conclusion: Explanation Without End

By adopting this standard, we cultivate explanations that are robust without being rigid, insightful without being final. Understanding becomes a continuing engagement, not a concluded story.

Good explanation is not a resting place — it is a stance of attentive orientation.

With this, the series on What Counts as an Explanation? completes its conceptual arc, equipping readers to engage with explanations critically, relationally, and responsibly, ready for the next stages of inquiry.