Sterling Logic Engine — Propositional Audit: “These Eyes”

 

Sterling Logic Engine — Propositional Audit: “These Eyes”

Sterling Logic Engine (SLE)

The Guess Who - "These Eyes" (Audio) Lyrics

Correspondence Analysis of Popular Song Themes

---

Step 1 — Correspondence Verdict

CORRESPONDENCE FAILURE DETECTED — Multiple violations of Propositions 18, 20, and 24–29.

---

Step 2 — Semantic Decomposition

The Facts: A romantic relationship has ended. The other person made commitments and then broke them. The speaker is physically separated from this person.

The Value-Claims:

• The relationship constituted the speaker’s “world”
• Its loss is a genuine harm requiring perpetual grief
• The speaker will never be free from this suffering
• This specific love was irreplaceable and constituted genuine good
• The speaker needs the other person for completeness

---

Step 3 — Correspondence Audit

Each value-claim fails Proposition 20 (the belief that any external is good or evil is factually false):

World-Constitution Error: Another person cannot constitute your world. Your world is your prohairesis. Other people are externals per Proposition 19.

Freedom-Location Error: Freedom is located in correct assent per Proposition 11. No external can imprison the rational faculty.

Irreplaceability Error: This treats the relationship as a genuine good that can be lost forever. Relationships are externals, neither good nor evil per Proposition 18.

Need-Attribution Error: Need implies the other is necessary for well-being. Only virtue is necessary for eudaimonia per Propositions 49–58.

---

Step 4 — Pathos Diagnostic

The emotional disturbance described (perpetual crying, longing, declarations of permanent bondage) is textbook pathos per Propositions 24–26:

• All emotions are caused by beliefs about what is good or evil (Prop 24)
• These emotions result from beliefs that externals have genuine value (Prop 25)
• Therefore, all emotions caused by such beliefs are pathological (Prop 26)

The speaker has assented to the impression that this person constituted a genuine good, and their absence constitutes a genuine evil. This is a factual error, and the emotional suffering follows necessarily from that error.

---

Step 5 — Assent Prompt

Do you see the mismatch? The song treats another human being — an external — as the source of the speaker’s world, freedom, and happiness. But Proposition 4 states that a person’s true identity is constituted by the rational faculty alone. The rational faculty cannot be damaged by another’s departure. It can only be damaged by its own false assent.

The claim of permanent unfreedom contradicts Proposition 57: perfect continual eudaimonia is not only possible but actually in our control.

---

Step 6 — Refactoring

Replace the false narrative with correspondence to Stoic reality:

Instead of: Emotional reaction based on false value-judgment about the departed person.

Sterling refactoring: “I observe that this person has departed. This is a preferred indifferent, but not a genuine good. My eudaimonia remains intact because it depends on virtue alone, which this external event cannot touch.”

Instead of: Assent to permanent bondage to externals.

Sterling refactoring: “My freedom consists in correct assent. I am as free in this moment as in any other, because freedom is the rational faculty operating correctly, not external circumstances aligning with my preferences.”

Reserve Clause Action: “I aim, with reservation, to conduct myself with dignity in this situation, acknowledging that whether this person returns or remains absent is not within my prohairesis. My good consists in maintaining correct judgment about what is genuinely valuable.”

---

Summary Verdict

This song is a systematic catalog of Correspondence Failures. Every major emotional claim treats externals as genuine goods or evils. The resulting pathos is the predictable consequence of false assent. The song’s narrative structure actively reinforces precisely the value-judgments that Sterling’s system is designed to correct.

---

Sterling Unified Stoic System — Propositional Audit.
Dave Kelly