CPA Candidate Register — Contemporary Figures Holding the Six Replacements
CPA Candidate Register — Contemporary Figures Holding the Six Replacements
Instrument context: Classical Presupposition Audit (CPA) v1.0. This register identifies prominent contemporary figures whose public argumentative records hold one or more of the six modern replacements for Sterling’s classical commitments, and assesses each candidate’s suitability for a full CPA run. Candidates are organized by the replacement position they primarily exemplify. Completed runs are noted where relevant. Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic), 2026.
Replacement 1 — Psychophysical Holism / Naturalist Psychology
(replaces C1, Substance Dualism)
Daniel Dennett (1942–2024)
Record: Consciousness Explained (1991); Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995); Freedom Evolves (2003); Breaking the Spell (2006); interviews and lectures extensively documented.
Assessment: The strongest single candidate in the entire register for a C1 and C2 finding. Dennett is the most systematic and explicit philosophical defender of the naturalist account of consciousness and compatibilist free will in the contemporary English-language tradition. He argues at length, with philosophical precision, that the self is a natural phenomenon, that consciousness is a product of physical processes, and that libertarian free will is incoherent. His record directly and load-bearingly contradicts C1 and C2 across his entire output. C3 will be Contrary (moral naturalism); C5 will be Inconsistent (scientific realism in tension with pragmatist accounts of mental content). Anticipated dissolution: Full. Priority: High. The Dennett CPA would be the cleanest and most philosophically explicit Full Dissolution run in the series.
Antonio Damasio
Record: Descartes’ Error (1994); The Feeling of What Happens (1999); Self Comes to Mind (2010); lectures and interviews.
Assessment: Damasio’s central thesis is that the Cartesian separation of mind and body is a philosophical error with neurological consequences — the self is constituted through the body’s representations of its own states. His C1 finding will be Contrary throughout. His position on C2 requires more careful audit: he preserves a meaningful sense of rational decision-making while grounding it in somatic processes. C3 will be Non-Operative (he does not argue moral epistemology directly). Dissolution: likely Partial. Priority: Medium. Valuable because his record reaches a popular audience and his C1 argument is structurally influential on how consciousness is understood outside academic philosophy.
Replacement 2 — Compatibilism
(replaces C2, Libertarian Free Will)
Daniel Kahneman
Record: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011); Noise (with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, 2021); numerous papers and interviews.
Assessment: Kahneman is not a philosopher but his two-systems model of cognition is arguably the most influential contemporary account of how judgment works — and it is a direct assault on the presuppositions of C2. His System 1/System 2 framework presents human judgment as a natural process dominated by fast automatic heuristics, with deliberate reason as a late and often ineffective corrective. The prohairesis as genuine first-cause of assent is not available in this picture. His C1 and C2 findings will both be Contrary. C6 is likely Non-Operative (his work is descriptive rather than normative). Dissolution: Full. Priority: High. The Kahneman CPA would be the most practically significant run in the series for a general audience: his framework is more widely adopted than any philosopher’s, and its implications for the classical account of agency have never been made explicit.
Cass Sunstein
Record: Nudge (with Richard Thaler, 2008); Republic.com (2001); How Change Happens (2019); extensive public writing.
Assessment: Sunstein’s nudge theory treats human agents as predictably irrational natural systems whose behavior can be steered by environmental design. His C2 is Contrary: genuine rational origination of choice is not his operative model. His C5 is likely Inconsistent: he appeals to welfare outcomes (pragmatist) and to rights-based constraints (correspondence). His C6 requires audit: his welfarism may be Partially Aligned (objective welfare) or Contrary (preference satisfaction). Dissolution: Full or Partial depending on C1 profile. Priority: Medium.
Replacement 3 — Ethical Naturalism (Philosophical Form)
(replaces C3, Ethical Intuitionism)
Rosalind Hursthouse
Record: On Virtue Ethics (1999); Ethics, Humans and Other Animals (2000); numerous papers on virtue ethics and naturalism.
Assessment: Hursthouse is the primary living systematic advocate of Aristotelian ethical naturalism and is explicitly referenced in Gill’s record. Her On Virtue Ethics is the most complete contemporary statement of the position that grounded virtue in natural facts about what it is to be a member of a biological kind. Her C3 will be Contrary and load-bearing. Her C1 profile is more nuanced than Gill’s: she does not develop a psychophysical holism thesis, and her account of agency may be Partially Aligned on C1. Her C6 will be Partially Aligned (naturalistic realism). Anticipated dissolution: depends on C1 profile; likely Partial. Priority: High. The Hursthouse CPA would establish the philosophical benchmark for Aristotelian naturalism, which is the most philosophically serious of the three C3 replacement forms.
Julia Annas
Record: The Morality of Happiness (1993); Intelligent Virtue (2011); Platonic Ethics, Old and New (1999); extensive work on ancient ethics.
Assessment: Annas argues for a naturalist reading of ancient virtue ethics in which happiness is grounded in the development of skills or excellences natural to human beings. Her Intelligent Virtue is particularly relevant: it treats virtue as a skill, acquired through practice, whose grounding is naturalistic. Her C3 will be Contrary. Her C1 profile differs from Gill’s: she does not hold a psychophysical holism thesis and her account of the agent is less holistically physical. C2 requires careful audit. Anticipated dissolution: Partial or Qualified. Priority: High. The Annas CPA alongside the Hursthouse CPA would map the full range of philosophical naturalism as a C3 replacement.
Ryan Holiday
Record: The Obstacle Is the Way (2014); Ego Is the Enemy (2016); Stillness Is the Key (2019); Discipline Is Destiny (2022); extensive interviews and newsletters.
Assessment: Holiday is the most widely read contemporary Stoic figure not yet audited. His therapeutic-functional naturalism is less philosophically explicit than Robertson’s, but his record is large, coherent, and philosophically revealing. His argument is consistently efficacy-based: Stoic practices are commended because they work, produce resilience, and support success. His C3 will be Non-Operative to Partially Aligned (he affirms Stoic moral claims but does not argue moral epistemology). His C5 profile is the most interesting: his validation criterion is success-in-the-world (pragmatist), but his commendation of virtue is presented as simply correct (correspondence). His C6 will be Partially Aligned. Anticipated dissolution: depends on C1 and C2 profiles, which require audit. Priority: High for audience reach; medium for philosophical depth.
Massimo Pigliucci
Record: How to Be a Stoic (2017); A Field Guide to a Happy Life (2020); Nonsense on Stilts (2010); extensive academic and public writing; his podcast and Substack.
Assessment: Pigliucci is the most philosophically trained of the contemporary Stoic popularizers who have not been audited. He holds explicit positions on which ancient doctrines are retainable and which must be dropped in light of modern science. He discards Stoic theology (providence) and the ancient materialist physics as scientifically indefensible, but argues that the ethics can be reconstructed on naturalist grounds. His C3 will require careful audit: he is more philosophically careful than Robertson about the grounds of moral claims. His C1 and C2 profiles depend on how he handles the question of rational agency after discarding the ancient physics. Priority: High. The most analytically interesting of the remaining Stoic figures because his selective reconstruction explicitly raises the question the six commitments address.
William Irvine
Record: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (2008); On Desire: Why We Want What We Want (2006); interviews and articles.
Assessment: Irvine presents Stoicism primarily as a technique for managing desire and maximizing tranquility. His C3 profile is distinctive: he does not affirm the Stoic value hierarchy in its radical form (virtue as the only genuine good), but rather offers a tranquility-management reading in which externals are treated as indifferent primarily because treating them as important causes distress. His C6 will likely be Contrary: moral facts are implicitly indexed to tranquility outcomes rather than treated as objectively independent. His dissolution profile may be unusual: his C6 Contrary may make the agent-level implication more practically significant than the standard naturalist profiles. Priority: Medium.
Replacement 3 — Emotivism / Constructivism (Cultural Form)
(replaces C3, Ethical Intuitionism, via the cultural route)
Christine Korsgaard
Record: Creating the Kingdom of Ends (1996); Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009); Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals (2018); numerous papers.
Assessment: Korsgaard is the most philosophically significant candidate in the constructivist category. She argues that moral obligations are constituted by the structure of rational agency itself — agents who reflectively endorse principles by which they act thereby constitute those principles as normative. Her C3 will be Contrary: moral knowledge is not direct apprehension but the output of a reflective procedure. Her C1 and C2 profiles are the most philosophically interesting: her account of rational self-constitution gives her a stronger claim to C1 and C2 alignment than any of the naturalists. She argues explicitly for the causal efficacy of rational reflection and the priority of the practical standpoint over the theoretical standpoint. Her C1 may be Partially Aligned (the rational self is treated as genuinely prior, not simply a natural system). Her C2 may be Partially Aligned (reflective endorsement preserves something like origination). Anticipated dissolution: No Dissolution or Partial. Priority: High. The Korsgaard CPA would be the most philosophically complex run in the series and would establish whether Kantian constructivism is more compatible with the classical commitments than naturalism.
Charles Taylor
Record: Sources of the Self (1989); A Secular Age (2007); The Malaise of Modernity (1991); Human Agency and Language (1985).
Assessment: Taylor argues that moral frameworks are constitutive of identity — the moral horizon within which one understands oneself is not discovered but inhabits. His C3 will be Contrary: moral knowledge is not direct apprehension but hermeneutic engagement with a moral tradition. His C1 profile is philosophically nuanced: he argues strongly against reductive naturalism and defends the irreducibility of human agency, which may produce Partial Alignment on C1. His C2 requires careful audit. Priority: Medium-High.
Replacement 4 — Pragmatist Revisability / Anti-Foundationalism
(replaces C4, Foundationalism)
Richard Rorty (1931–2007)
Record: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979); Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989); Achieving Our Country (1998); extensive essays.
Assessment: Rorty is the most systematic and explicit anti-foundationalist in the recent tradition. He argues that the philosophical project of grounding knowledge in indubitable first principles is a mistake, that truth is what is good for us to believe, and that solidarity rather than objective moral reality is the appropriate ground for ethical commitment. His C4 will be Contrary (anti-foundationalism explicitly held). His C5 will be Contrary (pragmatist account of truth). His C3 will be Contrary (no direct apprehension of moral facts). His C6 will be Contrary (solidarity rather than objective moral reality). His C1 and C2 profiles are less clear from his major works and require audit. Anticipated dissolution: likely Full. Priority: Medium (deceased, but foundational for understanding the C4 replacement).
Replacement 5 — Therapeutic Validation / Pragmatism Applied to Ethics
(replaces C5, Correspondence Theory of Truth)
Martin Seligman
Record: Learned Optimism (1991); Authentic Happiness (2002); Flourishing (2011); numerous papers on positive psychology; public lectures and interviews.
Assessment: Seligman is the founder of positive psychology and the figure whose work most directly competes with Robertson’s in the overlap between ancient virtue ethics and modern psychological practice. His PERMA model (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) is an empirical account of flourishing. His C5 will be Inconsistent in a structure similar to Robertson’s: he affirms virtue-adjacent claims as simply correct while validating practices on empirical grounds. His C6 will be Partially Aligned (flourishing is treated as objective) to Contrary (indexed to measurable psychological outcomes). Priority: Medium-High. The Seligman CPA would establish the positive psychology alternative to the therapeutic-Stoic framework and clarify the boundary between Stoic practice and scientific positive psychology.
Albert Ellis (1913–2007)
Record: Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (1962); A New Guide to Rational Living (1975); The Practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (1997); extensive publications.
Assessment: Ellis is the founder of REBT, the direct precursor to CBT that Robertson traces his Stoic lineage through. Ellis explicitly acknowledged Epictetus as a foundational source. His C5 profile will be Inconsistent: his philosophical argument invokes rational apprehension of the irrationality of false beliefs (correspondence) while his therapeutic validation is empiricist. His C3 will be Contrary (he grounds values in rational preference rather than direct apprehension). Priority: Medium (deceased, but foundational for understanding Robertson’s intellectual lineage).
Replacement 6 — Naturalistic Realism / Constructivism / Relativism
(replaces C6, Moral Realism)
Philippa Foot (1920–2010)
Record: Natural Goodness (2001); Virtues and Vices (1978); Moral Dilemmas (2002); papers throughout her career.
Assessment: Foot is the founding figure of naturalistic realism in the contemporary virtue ethics tradition, and Gill’s closest academic predecessor. Natural Goodness argues that human goodness is grounded in the same naturalistic framework that grounds the goodness of plants and animals: functioning well as the kind of being one is. Her C3 will be Contrary (naturalist derivation of moral knowledge). Her C6 will be Partially Aligned (genuine moral realism, naturalistic form). Her C1 profile will be distinctive: she argues against reductive naturalism in moral philosophy but does not develop a metaphysics of the self. Her C2 requires careful audit. Priority: High. The Foot CPA is the logical predecessor to the Hursthouse and Gill runs and would complete the naturalist virtue ethics trilogy.
Derek Parfit (1942–2017)
Record: Reasons and Persons (1984); On What Matters (2011, three volumes); papers.
Assessment: Parfit’s On What Matters argues that Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and contractualism converge on the same basic moral truths. He holds a form of non-naturalist moral realism — moral facts are objective and independent of natural facts — which places him closer to the corpus’s C6 than any other major contemporary figure outside the explicitly Stoic tradition. His C6 may be Partially Aligned to Aligned. His C3 will require careful audit: he argues for a form of rational apprehension of moral truths that may be closer to intuitionism than naturalism. His C1 and C2 profiles are philosophically complex (his famous views on personal identity dissolve the self in ways that may contradict C1 while his account of rational agency preserves something like origination). Priority: High. The Parfit CPA would be the most surprising run in the series and the most likely to produce a non-standard finding profile.
Priority Ranking for the Next Runs
Tier One — Highest philosophical yield and audience reach:
- Kahneman — widest cultural reach; Full Dissolution anticipated; directly relevant to the CPA’s practical significance
- Dennett — most explicit philosophical record on C1 and C2; Full Dissolution anticipated; establishes the philosophical benchmark for the naturalist account of mind
- Korsgaard — most philosophically complex; possible No Dissolution; would establish whether Kantian constructivism is more compatible with the corpus than naturalism
- Pigliucci — most philosophically trained remaining Stoic figure; his selective reconstruction directly raises the six-commitments question
Tier Two — High yield, strong records:
- Hursthouse — completes the naturalist virtue ethics mapping
- Foot — foundational for the entire naturalist virtue ethics tradition
- Parfit — potentially the closest approach to corpus alignment in the contemporary non-Stoic philosophical tradition
- Holiday — widest popular Stoic audience; practically significant for the series’s reach
Tier Three — Useful for specific replacement analysis:
- Annas — completes the ancient ethics naturalism mapping alongside Gill
- Seligman — positive psychology alternative to Robertson
- Taylor — hermeneutic alternative to both naturalism and intuitionism
- Irvine — tranquility-management Stoicism; distinctive C6 profile
- Damasio — somatic self; relevant to the C1 replacement analysis
Note: Figures already audited in the CPA series (Gill, Robertson, Sellars, Peterson, Mamdani, Singer, MacIntyre, Rawls, Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, Schosha) are excluded from this register. The Political Application Constraint applies: Sterling’s name must not appear in association with any run on political figures.
Framework: Grant C. Sterling, Eastern Illinois University. Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic), 2026.
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