6 ideas
People justify and explain actions using four distinct forms: conventions (accepted formulas like 'my train was late'), stories (cause-effect narratives with limited actors), codes (rule-based justifications referencing procedures or law), and technical accounts (specialized cause-effect logic). Each type fits different situations and signals a different relationship between the giver and receiver.
The reasons people give do less to convey accurate information than to establish, confirm, or repair the social relationship between giver and receiver. Choosing the wrong type of reason — a technical account where a story was expected — damages the relationship regardless of the reason's truth.
Conventions are socially approved, often superficial reasons ('traffic was terrible,' 'I had a prior commitment') that satisfy the recipient without inviting scrutiny. Their function is not accuracy but smooth maintenance of ongoing interaction, and their acceptance depends on matching the relationship's tone.
To understand any explanation, look first at the relationship between the parties rather than the content of the reason itself. The same event triggers a casual convention among equals, a formal code between unequal parties, and a technical account between specialists — the relationship dictates which form is appropriate.
After September 11, the same collapse generated wildly different reasons: survivors told personal stories of escape, officials invoked codes of duty and protocol, and engineers produced technical accounts of structural failure. The identical physical event produced incompatible explanations because each speaker occupied a different relationship to listeners and to the event.
Code-based reasons — used by lawyers, bureaucrats, and religious authorities — justify actions by appeal to whether proper rules and categories were followed, deliberately ignoring underlying cause and effect. This is why a legally correct outcome can feel deeply unsatisfying as an actual explanation of what happened.