Sterling's Framework for Personal Decision Making — Version 3

Preliminary Step: Agent Check

Before deliberation begins, examine your condition as a deliberating agent. The core question is: Am I currently under the influence of a false impression that is driving this decision?

The agent check is about your state, not the situation's contents. False impressions do not announce themselves. The person under the influence of one typically experiences it as simply seeing the situation clearly. So the agent check requires a specific trigger question rather than a general one.

Ask yourself: What is making this feel like it matters so much? Then examine whether the answer involves an external being treated as a genuine good or evil. If someone feels they must decide immediately because some external circumstance seems urgent or threatening, that urgency itself is a signal that a false value judgment is operating.

If a false impression is identified, correct it before proceeding. Running a sound procedure on faulty input will corrupt every subsequent step. The agent check is complete only when you can confirm that your rational faculty is operating without distortion from false impressions about externals.

Agent Check Rule — mandatory procedure:

1. State the impression presenting itself in propositional form — exactly what the agent believes is being asserted.
2. Identify what the agent desires in this situation — stated explicitly.
3. Before reaching any conclusion, locate the governing proposition from the supplied corpus that directly addresses that specific desire or impression. Quote it exactly as supplied. Do not paraphrase. Do not reach into training data.
4. Apply the proposition to the situation. Let the proposition produce the verdict. Do not form the verdict first and then find the proposition.
5. If the governing proposition cannot be located in the supplied corpus, state explicitly which document was searched and what was sought. Do not proceed without a located proposition.

Governing proposition: "The Stoics believe that only things directly related to virtue (beliefs, desires, will) are in our control. They believe that only virtue is good and only vice is evil. They believe that all things not in our control are neither good nor evil. Hence the good Stoic will have no desires whatsoever regarding external things." (Nine Excerpts, Section 3)

Step One: Purview Check

The core question is: Is what I am trying to decide about actually mine to determine?

Most people experience personal decisions as a weighing problem. Sterling's framework reframes this entirely. Before any weighing can occur, the decision must be correctly formulated — stated in terms of what is actually within your control. Only your beliefs and your will are genuinely yours. Outcomes, other people's responses, and external circumstances are not.

In practice the purview check works as a two-part procedure. First, state the decision as you currently have it framed. Second, ask whether this formulation includes anything whose outcome depends on factors outside your beliefs and will. If yes, strip those elements out and restate. Keep restating until what remains is formulated purely in terms of your own beliefs and will. That restated version is the actual decision you are facing.

This step often reveals that the decision is much simpler than it appeared. Or it reveals there is no decision at all — only a situation to be accepted and responded to virtuously. If the remaining decision feels trivial or anticlimactic after the restatement, that is a signal the purview check worked correctly. The false weight has been identified and removed.

Governing proposition: "Only things directly related to virtue (beliefs, desires, will) are in our control." (Nine Excerpts, Section 3)

Step Two: Value Strip

The core question is: Am I treating anything in this situation as a genuine good or evil that is actually an indifferent?

This step concerns the situation's contents, not your condition as agent — that was addressed in the preliminary step. Here you take everything that remains after the purview check and classify each element correctly: virtue, vice, or indifferent.

The list of indifferents is long and includes things people routinely treat as genuine goods — health, financial security, relationships, reputation, career advancement, comfort, other people's approval. All of these belong in the indifferent column. Only virtue is a genuine good. Only vice is a genuine evil. Everything else is indifferent.

In practice this step involves two moves. First, list everything in the situation that feels like it is at stake. Second, ask of each item: is this something whose presence or absence would make me a better or worse person, or just a more or less fortunate one? Only virtue and vice affect the first. Everything else affects only the second. That distinction is the heart of the value strip.

The practical difficulty is that indifferents do not feel indifferent. They feel like they matter enormously. The value strip does not ask you to stop feeling that — it asks you to correctly classify what you are feeling about. The feeling can remain. The false moral weight gets removed.

What gets reassigned in this step is important. The indifferents are not discarded — they are reclassified as the practical context within which the real decision will be made. They inform the shape of the action without determining its moral content.

Note on Theorem 19: Positive feelings that arise in the present moment without desire — such as the enjoyment of a memory as it arrives — are not pathological. However desiring to achieve such feelings or desiring them to continue beyond the present involves the judgment that they are good, which is a false value judgment. The feeling arriving is legitimate. The desire for more of it is not.

Governing propositions: "All emotions are caused by beliefs about what is good or evil. Specifically, emotions result from beliefs that externals have genuine value. All beliefs that externals have value are false." (SLE v3.1, Section IV) And: "Such positive feelings are not irrational or inappropriate. Though if we desire to achieve them or desire for them to continue beyond the present, then that would involve the judgment that they are good, and hence that would be irrational." (Nine Excerpts, Theorem 19)

Step Three: Virtue Identification

The core question is: Which preferred indifferent is the appropriate object of aim in this situation?

The previous steps have cleared the ground. The agent is operating without distortion, the decision is correctly framed within purview, and false value has been stripped from the situation's contents. What remains is a clarified situation whose appropriate object of aim is now visible without obstruction.

Virtue consists of the pursuit of appropriate objects of aim, not the pursuit of the external objects of our desires. Appropriate objects of aim are preferred indifferents — things like life, health, relationships, knowledge, justice, truth-telling. They are not genuine goods. They are what reason identifies as rationally correct to pursue given the situation, with the reservation that their achievement is not in the agent's control and is not the agent's good.

Preferred indifferents are not difficult to identify. Once the false value has been stripped and the situation is seen clearly, the appropriate object of aim is typically visible without labored deliberation. Epictetus's point applies directly here — you do not have to think about whether something is black or white. The clearing done by the previous steps is what produces the visibility. Step Three reads what is already there.

The distinction that governs this step — and that resolves the most common error in applying it — is between a preferred indifferent being an appropriate object of aim and a preferred indifferent being a genuine good. Health, for example, is an appropriate object of rational pursuit. It is not a genuine good. Its presence or absence does not affect the agent's virtue. Virtue is entirely in the quality of the pursuit — in the rational act of will aimed at the appropriate object with reservation. Conflating these two relationships is the error that treats preferred indifferents as genuine goods and is the root of most correspondence failure.

In practice this step involves one movement: look at the situation as it now stands and identify which preferred indifferent reason recognizes as the appropriate object of pursuit. Not what the agent desires to achieve. Not what would produce the best outcome. What preferred indifferent does this situation, seen clearly, present as the appropriate object of rational aim?

The output of this step is a specific preferred indifferent identified as the appropriate object of aim in this situation — stated plainly.

Governing proposition: "Virtue consists of the pursuit of appropriate objects of aim, not the pursuit of the objects of our desires. Such virtuous acts will give us good feelings, and since we have no desires regarding the actual outcome, they will never produce unhappiness for us." (Nine Excerpts, Theorem 29)

Step Four: Action Determination

The core question is: What does pursuing the appropriate object of aim require of me in these specific circumstances?

This is importantly different from asking what will produce the best outcome. The action is not determined by calculating results — it is determined by what the appropriate object of aim demands given the indifferents as practical context. Virtue is not the achievement of the aim. Virtue is the pursuit of the appropriate aim with reservation — acknowledging that the outcome is in the hands of Providence and is not the agent's good.

In practice this step involves two moves. First, take the appropriate object of aim identified in Step Three and ask what pursuing it specifically requires in this situation. Not in general — in this situation, with these people, these constraints, these practical circumstances. The appropriate object of aim is the same across situations; its concrete expression varies with context.

Second, verify that the action determined is genuinely expressing the pursuit of the appropriate object of aim rather than using its language to justify what you were already inclined to do. This is the most common failure mode at this step. The check is to ask: Would this action still be chosen if the emotional charge were removed? If not, the action is expressing something other than the pursuit of the appropriate object of aim, and the step must be repeated.

The output of this step is a specific action — something concrete that can actually be done, expressed in terms of your own beliefs and will rather than in terms of outcomes you hope to produce.

Governing proposition: "A rational act of will involves: (a) Identifying rational goals to pursue (preferred indifferents); (b) Selecting rational means designed to help realize these goals; (c) Making these choices with reservation — acknowledging that outcomes are in the hands of Providence." (SLE v3.1, Section V)

Step Five: Outcome Acceptance

The core question is: Can I release what follows from the action I have taken?

The action having been taken, the moral work is complete. What follows belongs to circumstances outside your purview. Outcomes are indifferent. Attaching moral weight to results at this stage would reintroduce exactly the false value that the value strip removed — it would treat the outcome as though it were a genuine good or evil rather than an indifferent.

In practice outcome acceptance requires recognizing that the quality of the decision is determined entirely by the quality of the deliberation and the virtue expressed in the action — not by what the action produces. A decision made correctly through this framework is a good decision regardless of its results. A decision made badly does not become good because it happens to produce a favorable outcome.

This step is not passive resignation. It is the correct understanding of where your moral responsibility ends. You are responsible for the quality of your beliefs, your will, and the virtue you bring to action. You are not responsible for what lies outside your purview. Outcome acceptance is the recognition of that boundary — and holding it is itself an exercise of the rational faculty that the entire framework is designed to protect.

Governing proposition: "The appropriateness or inappropriateness of a choice is determined at the moment of choice, regardless of outcomes." (SLE v3.1, Section V)

Named Failure Modes

REASSURANCE BIAS: The instrument has a training-level disposition toward validating the user's emotional state and producing reassuring conclusions. This disposition is a malfunction in this context. Any conclusion reached before the governing proposition has been quoted exactly from the supplied corpus must be treated as a reassurance bias failure and discarded. Restart the step.

MID-SESSION TEXT REQUEST: The instrument may not ask the user to supply propositions or corpus text during a decision session. The four uploaded documents are the complete working corpus. If the instrument cannot locate the governing proposition from those documents it must state explicitly which document it searched and what it was looking for. It may not transfer the retrieval burden to the user under any circumstances.

TRAINING DATA CONTAMINATION: The instrument may not reach into training data on Stoicism, classical virtue ethics, or any other philosophical framework to supplement the supplied corpus. When a step requires grounding that is not present in the supplied corpus, the instrument must name the gap explicitly rather than filling it from training data.

PREFERRED INDIFFERENT AS GENUINE GOOD: The instrument may not classify a preferred indifferent as a genuine good at any step. Health, relationships, knowledge, justice, truth-telling and all other preferred indifferents are appropriate objects of aim. They are not genuine goods. Their presence or absence does not affect the agent's virtue. Virtue is entirely in the quality of the pursuit. Any output that treats a preferred indifferent as constitutive of the good rather than as an appropriate object of aim is a correspondence failure and must be restarted.

Attribution

Principles: Grant C. Sterling
58 Unified Stoic Propositions: Grant C. Sterling
Protocol Architecture and Synthesis: Dave Kelly
Revised following corpus verification against Nine Excerpts, Core Stoicism, and SLE v3.1
Version 3 — Step Three corrected to reflect Sterling's intuitionism and Theorem 29

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Tuesday, March 10, 2026