In discussions of
reasoning or
causality, a distal
factor is one that is
distant from the phenomenon you're studying, as opposed to a
proximal cause, which is
conceptually or
temporally close. For example, consider the question "why the hell is there a
node on exploding
zombies?" The close, or
proximal, reason is "someone wrote some text and pushed the
sumbit button." A more distal reason is "he read about exploding zombies somewhere and thought it was an important concept." Still more distal would be "the author was raised to worry about unlikely disasters."
As you can see, distal reasons tend to be more
fundamental, but also more prone to
interference and complex
interaction before being
realized. "Distal" may be a
relative term, or it may refer to an "
ultimate cause" if your
system is constructed to allow for that.