To "solve the dilemma”, you mean to solve it internally

 

Claude:

Understood precisely.

When you say “solve the dilemma”, you mean to solve it internally—that is, to reach a state in which prohairesis assents only to the true moral proposition and remains in full harmony with reason, regardless of what occurs externally.

Within the Sterling framework, to “solve internally” entails the following logical sequence:

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1. Clarify the Field of Control

Identify all impressions involved in the situation and divide them into:

Internal: judgments, assents, moral propositions, impulses.

External: bodies, events, other people’s actions, outcomes.

Only the internal domain carries moral significance; externals are indifferent.

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2. Suspend False Value Judgments

Detect any impression that depicts an external as good or evil.

For example:

> “Losing my career would be terrible” → false proposition.

“Telling the truth may harm my family” → false proposition, because harm cannot occur to the moral self through externals.

These are neutralized as irrational judgments.

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3. Extract the True Moral Proposition

Formulate the single proposition that expresses reason itself in the context:

> “It is contrary to reason to affirm a falsehood.”

This becomes the criterion of right action.

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4. Assent to the True Proposition

Give assent only to that which reason shows to be self-evidently true.

This assent constitutes moral choice (prohairesis in act).

The moment of assent is the true decision; everything following is external motion.

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5. Generate Impulse in Accordance with the Assent

The impulse (hormē) arises necessarily from the rational assent:

True assent → rational impulse → right action.

False assent → irrational impulse → moral error.

The agent acts (refuses to falsify the record) not for outcome, but as the bodily expression of assent to truth.

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6. Accept All Consequences as Indifferent

After acting, externals unfold as they must.

The agent maintains tranquility, for nothing that follows can touch virtue.

Even ruin or death does not affect the correctness of the moral judgment.

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7. State of Internal Resolution

Once the moral proposition is assented to and enacted, the dilemma ceases to exist internally.

Conflict remains only in externals, where no moral significance lies.

Internally, harmony with reason is achieved—this is what solving the dilemma means.

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In brief:

To “solve the dilemma internally” = to isolate the true proposition, assent to it, act from it, and withdraw all valuation from externals.

That is the only genuine solution available to a rational agent operating under Sterling’s Core Stoicism.