Sterling Source Arguments for the Six Classical Philosophical Commitments

 

Sterling Source Arguments for the Six Classical Philosophical Commitments

Reference index. Each Classical Field Audit contains links to Sterling source texts for each of the six commitments. Each “Governing Corpus Text:” line pins an abstract commitment to a specific, dated primary-source argument in Sterling’s own words, so a field audit’s finding is checked against what he actually wrote rather than a paraphrase of it. Index architecture: Dave Kelly. 2026.

Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.

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C1 — Substance Dualism

Stoicism, Substance Dualism, and the Irreducibility of the Rational Faculty (Sterling, ISF January 20, 2012 and February 28, 2013): no physicalist account has explained how particles undergoing electro-chemical processes could possess the felt character of pain or the conceptual content of a valid logical inference; the dualism is directed at contemporary physicalism specifically, not defended by appeal to ancient Stoic cosmology.

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C2 — Libertarian Free Will

Free Will and Causation (Sterling, ISF August 18, 2021): Chrysippean compatibilism fails because the character that causes an act was itself never up to the agent — an unchosen initial character makes every downstream choice inevitable; the genuine alternative requires Acts of Reason as a distinct, non-physical causal power operating alongside physical causation, not reducible to it.

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C3 — Ethical Intuitionism

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; the same rational faculty that gives knowledge of mathematical truths gives knowledge of moral truths.

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C4 — Foundationalism

Stoicism, Foundationalism, and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge (Sterling, Stoics Yahoo Group January 19, 2015 and June 5, 2017): the fundamental truths of ethics are necessary, self-evident truths apprehended through rational perception, not derived from theology or empirical observation — moral properties cannot be sensed, so the is/ought gap cannot be bridged by any statement about what one can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell.

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C5 — Correspondence Theory of Truth

Stoicism, Correspondence Theory of Truth, and Objective Moral Facts (Sterling, Stoics Yahoo Group August 20, 2015 and ISF January 10, 2022): the only criterion of truth is correspondence with the facts, and the Stoics were pure realists on this point; the revisionary claim that pain, death, and rejection are not genuine evils depends on there being objective facts for value impressions to correspond to or fail to correspond to.

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C6 — Moral Realism

Stoicism, Moral Realism, and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts (Sterling, Stoics Yahoo Group January 13, 2015 and ISF May 26, 2021): moral reasons must exist independently of any agent’s contingent desires — the Stoic claim that harming one’s parents is a reason not to act, whether or not the agent cares about them, requires that this be a moral fact; if there are no objective moral facts, the Stoic project fails utterly.

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Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.