Below is a formal demonstration that the six commitments (6C) are not add-ons to rational agency, but its internal form—the way rational activity must be structured in order to count as rational at all (in the morally relevant sense).

This is not rhetorical. It is an identity at the level of form, not content.

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The Six Commitments as the Form of Rational Activity

0. Preliminary Clarification (Crucial)

We are not asking:

What beliefs should a rational agent have?

What moral theory should one endorse?

We are asking:

> What must be true of an activity for it to be an act of rational agency rather than mere behavior, reaction, or conditioning?

The six commitments answer that question exhaustively.

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I. Rational Activity Requires an Agent

→ Substance Dualism

Formal Role

Rational activity presupposes a locus of judgment that is not identical with:

bodily motion

emotion

impulse

external systems

causal chains

If there is no internally owned judgment, there is no rational act, only events.

Formally:

Rational activity = something someone does

Therefore: there must be a someone whose judgment is not reducible to externals

Substance dualism is not metaphysics added to rationality; it is the minimal condition for agency.

Without it, “rational activity” collapses into mechanism.

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II. Rational Activity Requires Alternatives

→ Metaphysical Libertarianism

Formal Role

For an act to be rational, it must be:

assessable as correct or incorrect

attributable to the agent

open to evaluation

But evaluation presupposes could-have-done-otherwise.

If no alternative is possible:

there is no choice

no responsibility

no rational governance

Formally:

Rational activity = selection among reasons

Selection presupposes real alternatives

Libertarian freedom is not a moral luxury.

It is a structural requirement of rational action.

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III. Rational Activity Requires Normative Content

→ Ethical Intuitionism

Formal Role

Rational activity is not mere calculation. It involves seeing something as counting in favor of or against an action or judgment.

That “seeing-as” cannot be:

inferred from neutral facts alone

derived from emotion

constructed by agreement

It must be immediately apprehended.

Formally:

Rational judgment requires direct recognition of reasons

Otherwise rationality becomes instrumental or procedural only

Ethical intuitionism supplies the content-recognition function without which rational agency is blind.

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IV. Rational Activity Requires an Objective Target

→ Moral Realism

Formal Role

Rational judgment aims at getting something right.

But “right” must mean:

independent of preference

independent of consensus

independent of outcome

Otherwise:

rationality collapses into coordination or expression

disagreement loses meaning

Formally:

Rational activity = answerable to how things are

That answerability requires objective facts

Moral realism is not an ethical add-on; it is what makes rational disagreement possible.

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V. Rational Activity Requires a Correctness Condition

→ Correspondence Theory of Truth

Formal Role

Even with an objective target, rationality needs a criterion for success.

That criterion cannot be:

coherence alone

sincerity

usefulness

emotional resolution

It must be fit between judgment and reality.

Formally:

Rational activity succeeds iff judgment corresponds to what is the case

Failure is misalignment, not impurity

Correspondence is the truth-condition of rational activity.

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VI. Rational Activity Requires Termination

→ Foundationalism

Formal Role

If rational activity required:

infinite justification,

endless explanation,

perpetual defense,

then rational agency would never complete an act.

There must be a point where:

judgment stands

action proceeds

explanation stops

Formally:

Rational activity must be capable of completion

Completion requires legitimate stopping

Foundationalism supplies the closure condition of rational action.

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VII. Integration: Why These Six Are Exhaustive

Each commitment corresponds to a necessary structural feature of rational activity:

Structural Need Commitment

An agent Substance Dualism

Choice Libertarianism

Recognized reasons Intuitionism

Objective standard Moral Realism

Truth condition Correspondence

Completion Foundationalism

Remove any one, and rational activity degrades into:

compulsion

conditioning

calculation

conformity

rationalization

paralysis

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VIII. Final Synthesis (Exact)

You can now state the identity precisely:

> The six commitments are not principles applied to rational agency; they are the formal conditions that make rational agency possible as a responsible, truth-answerable activity.

And therefore:

> Virtue is rational agency functioning correctly—i.e., agency whose activity instantiates all six commitments in act.

That conclusion is not ideological.

It is structural.

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IX. Why This Matters (One Line)

This is why:

virtue cannot be automated

virtue cannot be trained as habit alone

virtue cannot be reduced to outcomes

virtue disappears the moment agency disappears

Because virtue just is rational activity in proper form.

If you want, the next step could be:

a failure-mode diagram showing how each commitment breaks rational activity when violated, or

a one-paragraph formal definition suitable for inclusion in your system canon.