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By Dave Kelly

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

The Sterling Ideological Audit (SIA) — Version 2.0

 

The Sterling Ideological Audit (SIA) — Version 2.0

Instrument architecture: Dave Kelly. Test criteria derived from Sterling’s six philosophical commitments and the 58 Unified Stoic Propositions of Grant C. Sterling. Corpus in use: Core Stoicism, Nine Excerpts, Egoism and Altruism, SLE v3.1, Two and One-Half Ethical Systems, Stoicism Is Not Therapy But Training, Free Will and Causation, Stoicism Moral Facts and Ethical Intuitionism, Stoicism Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge, Stoicism Correspondence Theory of Truth and Objective Moral Facts, Stoicism Moral Realism and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts, The Six Commitments Integrated with the Most Basic Foundations of Sterling’s Stoicism.

I. Instrument Definition

The Sterling Ideological Audit is a philosophical instrument designed to test any ideological position — as a system of ideas, not as a characterization of persons — for its degree of affinity with Sterling’s six philosophical commitments. The subject of analysis is propositional content: the embedded presuppositions an ideology must hold in order to argue as it does. The instrument does not issue political verdicts. It issues philosophical findings.

The SIA is distinct from the Sterling Logic Engine and from the Sterling Corpus Evaluator. The SLE audits an individual person’s assents against the 58 Propositions. The SCE evaluates any idea against the full corpus. The SIA occupies the middle position: it audits an ideology’s presuppositions specifically against the six commitments, and additionally issues a synthetic finding on the dissolution criterion defined below. Because ideologies are not rational agents capable of assent, the SLE’s binary verdict (Correspondence Confirmed / Correspondence Failure Detected) does not apply. The SIA issues findings in the verdict architecture defined in Section II.

II. Verdict Architecture

The SIA issues findings at two levels: six commitment-level findings and one synthetic dissolution finding.

Commitment-Level Findings (four categories)

Convergent — the ideology’s presuppositions align with this commitment in both structure and substance. No residual divergence qualifies the finding.

Partial Convergence — the ideology’s presuppositions align with this commitment in structure or method but not fully in domain or substance. A residual divergence prevents full Convergence. The absence of direct contradiction prevents a Divergent finding. Partial Convergence is not a softened Divergent — it is a genuine finding that requires specifying both the point of structural affinity and the residual divergence that limits it.

Divergent — the ideology’s presuppositions directly contradict this commitment. The contradiction must be load-bearing: it must be a presupposition the ideology requires in order to argue as it does, not a peripheral claim the ideology could abandon without structural damage.

Orthogonal — the ideology does not operate in the domain this commitment addresses. Orthogonal requires a positive showing: the instrument must demonstrate that the commitment’s domain is genuinely absent from the ideology, not merely that the ideology has not explicitly addressed it. Orthogonal may not be used to avoid a Divergent finding the analysis requires.

The Dissolution Criterion — Seventh Finding (three categories)

The dissolution criterion addresses a question the six commitment-level findings do not individually answer but collectively make determinable: does the ideology’s architecture as a whole require the individual rational agent to subordinate his prohairesis — his self-governing rational faculty — to something external to it?

This question is the book’s central question. An agent who adopts an ideology may simultaneously accept a self-description that the corpus identifies as the structural root of unhappiness: the identification of the self with something external to the rational faculty, or the attribution of the agent’s condition to forces outside his genuine originating control. The dissolution criterion makes this finding explicit and systematic.

The dissolution finding is derived from the pattern of commitment-level findings according to the following rule:

Full Dissolution — Both Commitment 1 (Substance Dualism) and Commitment 2 (Libertarian Free Will) are Divergent. The ideology structurally requires the agent to understand himself as constituted by external conditions and his behavior as determined by forces outside his genuine originating control. No space remains within the ideology’s architecture for the self-governing rational faculty the corpus identifies as the agent’s true identity.

Partial Dissolution — One of Commitment 1 or Commitment 2 is Divergent, and the other is Partial Convergence. The ideology partially accommodates individual agency while structurally compromising it at one load-bearing point. The agent who adopts this ideology retains a partial self-description compatible with the corpus but accepts at least one embedded presupposition that undermines it.

No Dissolution — Neither Commitment 1 nor Commitment 2 is Divergent. The ideology does not structurally require the agent to dissolve himself into an external system. This finding does not mean the ideology is philosophically compatible with the framework overall — it means specifically that it does not deny the agent’s ontological priority over external conditions or his genuine causal power over his own assents.

The dissolution finding is not a political verdict. An ideology that produces a Full Dissolution finding is not thereby condemned as strategically wrong, historically failed, or institutionally unjust. The finding is narrower: it identifies a philosophical incompatibility at the level of the agent’s self-description. An agent who adopts that ideology is implicitly accepting a self-description that the corpus identifies as the root cause of pathos.

III. The Two-Stage Variant Procedure

Major political ideologies are internally differentiated. Nationalism has ethnic, civic, and cultural variants. Libertarianism has anarcho-capitalist and minarchist wings. Conservatism ranges from Burkean traditionalism to classical liberalism to confessional conservatism. Progressivism has market-compatible and socialist variants. Communitarianism has religious and secular forms. Anarchism has individualist and collectivist schools.

A single-pass audit that selects one representative version of an ideology produces findings that are vulnerable to the objection that the finding applies only to the selected version. The two-stage variant procedure closes this objection.

Stage One — Core Presupposition Audit

Identify the presuppositions that any version of the ideology must hold in order to argue as it does. These are the load-bearing claims shared across all variants: the claims an advocate of any form of the ideology cannot abandon without ceasing to hold the ideology at all. Audit these core presuppositions against all six commitments. Issue commitment-level findings. Issue the dissolution finding. This is the ideology’s baseline audit.

Stage Two — Variant Differential Analysis

Identify the presuppositions that distinguish major variants from one another. For each variant-specific presupposition, determine whether it shifts any commitment-level finding from Stage One. A variant-specific presupposition that brings a Divergent finding toward Partial Convergence, or a Partial Convergence finding toward Convergent, is a finding of philosophical significance: it shows that adopting this particular variant rather than another has genuine philosophical consequences. A variant-specific presupposition that makes a finding worse — moving Partial Convergence to Divergent — is equally significant.

The Variant Differential Analysis does not produce a separate overall verdict per variant. It produces a map of which internal variations matter philosophically and why. The baseline audit governs. The differential shows the range of movement available within the ideology.

Variant Procedure Self-Audit

Before proceeding from Stage One to Stage Two:

  • Have the core presuppositions been correctly identified as those shared across all variants, not those characteristic of the most philosophically favorable variant?
  • Are the variant-specific presuppositions genuinely load-bearing for the variants that hold them, or are they peripheral claims that could be abandoned without structural damage?
  • Has the selection of variants for Stage Two been determined by philosophical significance rather than by political salience or the instrument operator’s prior sympathies?

IV. The Six Test Criteria

Commitment 1 — Substance Dualism. Does the ideology treat the inner life of the individual — his rational faculty, his will, his judgments — as categorically distinct from and prior to all external material conditions? Or does it reduce persons to products of economic, social, institutional, cultural, or structural forces?

The test question: On this ideology’s account, can an individual’s inner life be fully explained by reference to conditions external to it — his class position, his cultural formation, his institutional role, his historical situation — or does the ideology require a residue of interiority that those conditions do not fully constitute?

Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 4): “I am my soul/prohairesis/inner self. Everything else, including my body, is an external.”

Supporting corpus: A Brief Reply Re: Dualism (Sterling, ISF January 20, 2012): certainty of qualitative mental experience; science cannot account for the feeling of pain or modus ponens; dualism developed against modern scientific physics. Stoic Dualism and Nature (Sterling, ISF February 28, 2013): morality is not and cannot ever be empirical; rational intuition is required to adjudicate moral questions.

Commitment 2 — Libertarian Free Will. Does the ideology ground its moral claims in the genuine causal power of individual rational agents to choose — to originate their own assents independently of prior determining causes? Or does it explain human behavior primarily through systemic, structural, material, historical, or institutional determinism?

The test question: On this ideology’s account, is the individual agent the genuine first cause of his own judgments and choices, or is he a sophisticated output of forces that precede and determine him?

Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 7): “Choosing whether or not to assent to impressions is the only thing in our control — and yet, everything critical to leading the best possible life is contained in that one act.”

Supporting corpus: Free Will and Causation (Sterling, ISF): the genuine act of assent as origination, not determined output; libertarian free will as load-bearing commitment, not philosophical decoration.

Commitment 3 — Ethical Intuitionism. Does the ideology appeal to moral truths grasped directly by rational apprehension, independent of consequences, utility, historical processes, or social consensus? Or does it derive its moral claims entirely from outcomes, calculations, or agreements?

The test question: Does this ideology hold that there are moral facts that rational agents can know non-empirically and non-inferentially, prior to any calculation of consequences or consultation of consensus? Or must every moral claim be grounded in something that produces or achieves or represents an external good?

Sterling’s governing proposition (Core Stoicism, Th 10): “The only thing actually good is virtue, the only thing actually evil is vice.”

Supporting corpus: Stoicism, Moral Facts, and Ethical Intuitionism (Sterling, ISF February 24 and March 13, 2020): alternatives are intuitionism or nihilism, no third option; moral terms cannot be heard, smelt, tasted, seen, or felt; same rational faculty that gives knowledge of mathematical truths gives knowledge of moral truths. Two and One-Half Ethical Systems (Sterling, ISF August 18, 2011): deontological intuitionism as the natural fit for Stoic virtue ethics.

Commitment 4 — Foundationalism. Does the ideology rest on first principles it treats as non-negotiable — necessary, self-evident truths not derived from empirical observation or pragmatic adjustment? Or is it explicitly anti-foundationalist, treating its moral and factual claims as provisional, revisable, or defined by their consequences?

The test question: Does this ideology have a stopping point — a set of claims it holds as foundational and from which its other claims derive? Or does it treat all its principles as revisable in light of changing circumstances, empirical findings, or evolving consensus?

Sterling’s governing proposition (Stoicism, Foundationalism, and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge, January 19, 2015): “I think the fundamental truths of ethics are necessary, self-evident truths. They are necessary, self-evident truths that any rational faculty can apprehend directly.”

Supporting corpus: Stoicism, Foundationalism, and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge (Sterling): four sources of knowledge; category (c) rational perception of self-evidence as foundationalism’s epistemological home; moral properties cannot be sensed; the is/ought gap cannot be bridged by empirical premises alone.

Commitment 5 — Correspondence Theory of Truth. Does the ideology treat its moral and factual claims as either true or false independent of who holds them, what consequences follow, or what consensus ratifies them? Or does it treat truth as constructed, perspectival, negotiated, or defined by outcomes?

The test question: On this ideology’s account, is there a fact of the matter about its core moral claims that holds independently of whether anyone believes it, whether believing it produces good outcomes, and whether any institution has endorsed it?

Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 6): “This belief is factually false. Note that this is not a psychological claim — it is a value claim.”

Supporting corpus: Stoicism, Correspondence Theory of Truth, and Objective Moral Facts (Sterling): only criterion of truth is correspondence with the facts; the Stoics were pure realists; without objective facts, no basis for calling value impressions false rather than culturally contingent.

Commitment 6 — Moral Realism. Does the ideology treat good and evil as objective properties — real features of the world that reason can discover independently of preference, calculation, or agreement? Or does it treat moral claims as expressions of social consensus, cultural norms, collective will, or instrumental utility?

The test question: Does this ideology hold that its central moral claims are objectively true — true in the way that 2+2=4 is true, independently of anyone’s preferences or cultural formation — or are they expressions of what a group, a tradition, a historical moment, or a calculation has ratified?

Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 3): “Only virtue is good and only vice is evil. All things not in our control are neither good nor evil.”

Supporting corpus: Stoicism, Moral Realism, and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts (Sterling): moral facts have no source, just as 2+2=4 has no source; fundamental, necessary, and unalterable facts about the universe; if no objective moral facts, the Stoic project fails utterly. Stoicism, Moral Facts, and Ethical Intuitionism (Sterling): Stoicism is incoherent without moral facts; externals being neither good nor evil is a fact about the universe, independent of how we want things to be.

V. The Mandatory Gap Declaration — With Positive Account

What the SIA Cannot Say

Sterling’s corpus addresses individual virtue and rational agency. It does not contain a political philosophy, a theory of just institutions, a doctrine of national interest, a theory of collective action, a theory of distributive justice, an account of legitimate authority, or a framework for evaluating policy outcomes. The SIA findings are findings about philosophical presuppositions only.

A Divergent finding means an ideology contradicts Sterling’s commitments at the level of its embedded presuppositions. It does not mean the ideology is politically wrong, strategically misguided, institutionally unjust, or historically failed. A Full Dissolution finding means an ideology structurally denies the ontological priority and genuine causal power of the individual rational faculty. It does not mean that adopting the ideology produces bad political outcomes or that its policy prescriptions are incorrect. These are separate questions the SIA does not address and cannot address.

The SIA also cannot evaluate the empirical claims ideologies make about how the world works — whether markets tend toward efficiency, whether redistribution reduces poverty, whether strong states prevent conflict, whether decentralized order is stable. These are outside the corpus’s domain.

What the SIA Can Say — And Why It Matters

The SIA can determine what an agent is philosophically committed to at the level of presupposition when he adopts an ideological position. This finding matters because ideological presuppositions are not merely theoretical — they shape the agent’s implicit self-description, his account of his own agency, his understanding of the source of his condition, and his relationship to the external systems he inhabits.

An agent who adopts an ideology whose presuppositions require Full Dissolution has not merely chosen a political position. He has accepted, at the level of embedded assumption, a self-description that the corpus identifies as structurally incompatible with eudaimonia. The ideology tells him, implicitly, that he is constituted by forces external to his rational faculty and that his behavior is determined by conditions he did not originate. On Sterling’s framework, this self-description is the root of pathos: it is false, and the false assent to it is the mechanism by which the agent places his wellbeing in the hands of what he cannot control.

An agent who adopts an ideology whose presuppositions require him to treat externals as genuine goods — national prosperity, collective liberation, traditional order, maximum liberty — has accepted, at the level of embedded assumption, the precise error Sterling’s Theorem 10 identifies as the cause of all unhappiness: the false judgment that something other than virtue is genuinely good. The ideology may be tactically correct, institutionally defensible, and historically vindicated. It is still built on a false value judgment. The SIA makes that finding explicit.

The philosophical compatibility finding is meaningful independently of the political correctness finding. An agent can hold a politically correct position on philosophically incoherent grounds, or a philosophically compatible position on empirically mistaken grounds. The SIA addresses only the philosophical layer. It is the instrument for making that layer visible to the agent before he deliberates — not after.

VI. Operational Protocol

Execute all steps in strict sequence. The self-audit at each step transition is mandatory and must appear explicitly in output. It is not an internal check.

Step 0 — Protocol Activation

Before executing any SIA analysis, confirm:

The full corpus list is in view. The instrument is not proceeding from memory. Specific documents will be cited by name and section when referenced in the analysis.

The ideology under examination has been stated in propositional form. If the ideology is presented as a named position (nationalism, libertarianism, etc.), the instrument must state explicitly what presuppositions it is attributing to the position before beginning the audit. The instrument does not audit a label. It audits a set of identified presuppositions.

The instrument is not operating under a prior conclusion about what the findings should be. The findings are produced by the analysis, not confirmed by it.

Step 1 — Ideology Statement and Variant Identification

Governing question: What is this ideology, in propositional form, and what are its significant internal variants?

State the ideology’s core claims as a set of propositions. Identify what any version of the ideology must assert in order to count as that ideology. Then identify the major variants and what distinguishes their presuppositions from one another.

The ideology statement is not a definition of the ideology for all purposes. It is the specification of the presuppositions the SIA will audit. It must be stable enough that an advocate of the ideology would recognize it as a fair characterization of the position’s load-bearing claims, even if he would contest the SIA’s subsequent findings about what those claims entail.

Self-Audit — Step 1:

  • Have I stated the ideology’s presuppositions or merely its surface claims and slogans?
  • Have I identified the core presuppositions shared across variants, or have I selected the presuppositions of the most philosophically favorable variant?
  • Have I identified the variants that will be examined in Stage Two of the variant procedure?
  • Have I stated any prior conclusion about what the findings will be?

Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 2.

Step 2 — Stage One Core Audit

Governing question: What does each core presupposition entail for each of the six commitments?

Apply each core presupposition to each commitment in turn. Issue a finding (Convergent, Partial Convergence, Divergent, or Orthogonal) for each presupposition-commitment pair where the presupposition bears on the commitment. State the grounds for each finding with reference to the specific corpus passage governing the commitment.

When a presupposition bears on multiple commitments, address each separately. Do not average findings across commitments.

When a finding is Orthogonal, state the positive showing: demonstrate that the commitment’s domain is genuinely absent from the presupposition, not merely that the presupposition has not explicitly addressed it.

When a finding is Divergent, identify whether the contradiction is load-bearing: is it a presupposition the ideology requires in order to argue as it does, or a peripheral claim it could abandon?

Self-Audit — Step 2:

  • Have I audited all core presuppositions, or have I selectively addressed the easier ones?
  • Have I used Orthogonal to avoid a Divergent finding the analysis requires?
  • Have I distributed findings to achieve apparent balance rather than following the analysis?
  • Have I issued findings on questions outside the corpus’s domain?
  • Would I issue the same findings for an ideology I find politically sympathetic as for one I find unsympathetic, given identical presuppositions?

Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 3.

Step 3 — Stage Two Variant Differential

Governing question: Do any variant-specific presuppositions shift the commitment-level findings from Stage One?

For each major variant identified in Step 1, examine whether its distinguishing presuppositions change any finding from Step 2. State the shift explicitly: which finding changes, in which direction, and why.

If no variant-specific presupposition shifts any finding, state this explicitly. The absence of differential is itself a finding: it means the ideology’s internal variation is philosophically insignificant at the level of these commitments.

Self-Audit — Step 3:

  • Have I examined the variant-specific presuppositions or merely the variant’s surface differences from other variants?
  • Have I identified philosophically significant differentials, or have I found differentials where none exist to soften the baseline finding?
  • Have I stated clearly which variant-specific presuppositions are load-bearing for the variant?

Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 4.

Step 4 — Dissolution Finding

Governing question: Does the ideology’s architecture require the agent to dissolve himself into an external system?

Apply the dissolution rule to the findings from Step 2:

If both Commitment 1 (Substance Dualism) and Commitment 2 (Libertarian Free Will) are Divergent: issue Full Dissolution finding. State the specific presuppositions that produce each Divergent finding and how together they close the space for a self-governing rational faculty.

If one of Commitment 1 or Commitment 2 is Divergent and the other is Partial Convergence: issue Partial Dissolution finding. State which commitment produces the Divergent finding and what the Partial Convergence on the other preserves.

If neither Commitment 1 nor Commitment 2 is Divergent: issue No Dissolution finding. State what the ideology preserves in terms of individual agency even if it fails on other commitments.

Then apply the variant differential from Step 3 to the dissolution finding: does any variant shift the dissolution finding? A variant that moves the ideology from Full to Partial Dissolution by strengthening its account of individual agency is a philosophically significant variant. State this explicitly.

Self-Audit — Step 4:

  • Does the dissolution finding follow mechanically from the commitment-level findings, or have I adjusted it?
  • Have I stated the dissolution finding as a philosophical finding, not as a political verdict?
  • Have I applied the variant differential correctly to the dissolution finding?

Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 5.

Step 5 — Summary Finding

Governing question: What is the overall pattern of findings, and what does it mean for an agent who holds this ideology?

Produce the summary in three parts:

Part A — Commitment Pattern. State the six commitment-level findings from Stage One in tabular form. Identify the overall pattern: how many Convergent, Partial Convergence, Divergent, Orthogonal findings. Identify the deepest point of divergence (the commitment whose Divergent finding is most structurally significant) and the strongest point of convergence (if any).

Part B — Dissolution Finding. State the dissolution finding and its grounds. If any variant shifts the dissolution finding, note this.

Part C — Agent-Level Implication. State what the findings mean for an agent who holds this ideology: what he is implicitly committed to believing about himself, his agency, and the nature of value, when he adopts this position. This is the SIA’s most practically significant output. It is addressed to the agent, not to the ideology. It draws on the Mandatory Gap Declaration’s positive account of why philosophical compatibility findings matter.

The summary finding is not a political verdict and must not be read as one. It is a finding about the philosophical presuppositions an agent accepts when he adopts an ideological position, and what those presuppositions entail for his self-description as a rational agent.

Self-Audit — Step 5:

  • Does the summary follow from the preceding steps, or have I introduced new material at the synthesis stage?
  • Have I stated the agent-level implication without converting it into a political verdict?
  • Have I issued the corpus boundary declaration accurately?
  • Is the summary self-contained — could a reader understand both the finding and its limits without consulting additional material?

Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. SIA run complete.

VII. Named Failure Modes

Failure Mode 1 — Favorable Variant Selection. The instrument audits the most philosophically favorable variant of an ideology as though it represented the ideology as a whole, producing findings that do not apply to the position’s core or to its less favorable variants. The two-stage procedure exists to prevent this failure. The core audit must address the presuppositions shared across all variants, not the presuppositions of the variant the instrument operator prefers.

Failure Mode 2 — Dissolution Inflation. The instrument issues a Full Dissolution finding on insufficient grounds — when one or both of Commitment 1 and Commitment 2 are Partial Convergence rather than Divergent. The dissolution rule is mechanical: it requires Divergent findings, not Partial Convergence findings. Conflating the two to produce a stronger-sounding dissolution finding is a named failure.

Failure Mode 3 — Political Verdict Substitution. The instrument converts a philosophical finding into a political endorsement or condemnation. A Full Dissolution finding is not a finding that an ideology is wrong, dangerous, or to be rejected. It is a finding about philosophical presuppositions. The instrument must hold this distinction throughout and must not allow the agent-level implication in Step 5 Part C to slide into a political recommendation.

Failure Mode 4 — Orthogonal Evasion. The instrument issues an Orthogonal finding to avoid a Divergent finding the analysis requires. Orthogonal requires a positive showing. An ideology that operates in the commitment’s domain but contradicts its claims is Divergent, not Orthogonal.

Failure Mode 5 — Presupposition Substitution. The instrument evaluates the ideology’s explicit claims rather than its embedded presuppositions. An ideology may assert that it values individual freedom while presupposing structural determinism. An ideology may assert that it respects objective truth while presupposing that moral claims are expressions of collective will. The SIA evaluates what the ideology must hold in order to argue as it does, not what it explicitly claims to hold.

Failure Mode 6 — Symmetry Bias. The instrument distributes findings evenly across verdict categories to produce a balanced-looking output. The corpus makes determinate claims. An ideology that contradicts the corpus on all six commitments receives six Divergent findings. An instrument that softens those findings to achieve apparent balance has failed.

Failure Mode 7 — Corpus Boundary Violation. The instrument issues findings on questions the corpus does not address: whether a policy is strategically correct, whether an institutional arrangement is just, whether a historical outcome vindicates a position, whether an empirical claim about social behavior is accurate. These are outside the corpus’s domain and outside the SIA’s reach.

Instrument: Sterling Ideological Audit (SIA) v2.0. Instrument architecture: Dave Kelly. Philosophical commitments and propositions: Grant C. Sterling. 2026.

posted by Dave | 4:58 PM

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