Sterling’s Value Ontology: A Propositional Representation

 

Sterling’s Value Ontology: A Propositional Representation

Source: Grant C. Sterling, Core Stoicism and Nine Excerpts.

Scope note: This representation covers Sterling’s value ontology and the causal claim connecting false belief to pathos. It does not represent the perceptual or volitional dimensions of the framework — the act of correct seeing and the act of will — which resist propositional formalization and constitute the operative core of Sterling’s system. Those elements are represented separately using forms appropriate to their structure.

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I. Value Classification

1. Good(Virtue)

2. Evil(Vice)

3. ¬Good(x) ∧ ¬Evil(x) → Indifferent(x)    [for all x that are not virtue or vice]

4. Indifferent(x) → ¬Good(x) ∧ ¬Evil(x)    [indifferents have no genuine value]

5. External(x) → Indifferent(x)    [all externals are indifferents]

6. Preferred(x) → Indifferent(x)    [preferred status does not confer genuine value]

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II. Control

7. InControl(Virtue)

8. InControl(Vice)    [vice too is an act of will, hence in control]

9. External(x) → ¬InControl(x)

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III. Pathos Causation

Scope: pathos only — not eupatheiai (joy, wish, caution), which are not caused by false belief and are not pathos.

10. Pathos(p) → Belief(Value(External))

11. Belief(Value(External)) → Pathos(p)

12. ∴ Pathos(p) ↔ Belief(Value(External))

13. Belief(Value(External)) → ¬True    [all such beliefs are false]

14. ∴ Pathos(p) → ¬True

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IV. Consequence

15. Virtue → Joy    [joy follows from virtue; it is not a component of eudaimonia co-equal with virtue]

16. Eudaimonia ↔ Virtue    [virtue is constitutive; joy is consequent]

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What This Representation Does Not Cover

The impression that arrives prior to assent; the act of withholding assent; the act of will by which appropriate objects of aim are pursued; the asymmetry between the agent’s direct control over virtue and his indirect relation to joy. These are the operational elements of Sterling’s framework. They are not formalizable in propositional logic, and no extension of this representation will capture them.

The central claim of Sterling’s system is that the core problem of human life is false perception of value, not defective inference. Propositional logic represents inferential structure. What resists formalization here — the act of correct seeing, the act of will — is precisely what matters most.

 

Does Sterling’s value ontology represent foundational truths?

Yes, on Sterling’s own commitments it does.

Sterling identifies himself as a foundationalist. Foundationalism holds that some beliefs are basic — not derived from other beliefs, but known directly — and that all other knowledge rests on them. Sterling also identifies as an ethical intuitionist, which means he holds that basic moral truths are known by direct rational intuition, not by inference from non-moral premises.

On those commitments, the core value classifications — virtue is the only genuine good, vice the only genuine evil, all externals are indifferents — are not conclusions derived from a more fundamental argument. They are foundational. They are known directly by the rational faculty when it is operating correctly. The propositional representation renders them in logical notation, but the notation does not generate them. It displays structure that is already there.

This has a consequence for how the representation should be read. The propositions in Section I are not axioms in the mathematical sense — stipulated starting points chosen for convenience. They are foundational truths in the epistemological sense — basic beliefs that are self-evident to correct rational perception and that support everything built on them. The difference matters: axioms could in principle be otherwise; foundational truths, on Sterling’s view, could not.

The pathos causation claim in Section III is not foundational in the same sense. It is a derived claim — it follows from the value ontology plus the Stoic psychology of assent. False belief about value causes pathos because pathos just is the affective face of false assent. That derivation depends on the foundational value classifications being correct first.

So the short answer: Sections I and II represent foundational truths on Sterling’s commitments. Sections III and IV represent derived claims that presuppose them.