The Pre-Decision Brief v1.2
The Pre-Decision Brief v1.2
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
Built under The Application Builder’s Kit v1.0.
I. The Beginning
Everyone wants happiness. Incomplete happiness is not worth accepting if complete happiness is available. Complete happiness must therefore lie wholly within our control. Only assent lies wholly within our control. Happiness is therefore correct assent, correct when it matches the truth about value. Only virtue is good and only vice is evil; everything else is indifferent.
A decision is therefore an assent to an action proposition. Its appropriateness is settled at the moment it is made, whatever follows (SLE Prop 38, as cited in SDF v3.3). The brief exists to prepare that assent. It never gives it.
II. What the Brief Is For
- Its object: the operator’s assent to one action proposition.
- Its output: that proposition, formulated and ready to be assented to, or else the finding that no decision is needed.
- Its criterion: whether the assent matches the truth about value and duty.
The brief does not rank options, promise relief, or predict outcomes.
III. The Brief
1. State the decision as you have it framed. Then separate it into single claims: what you believe about the facts, what you believe is at stake, and what you feel pushed to do. (Separate: clause (a).)
2. Test the claims about what is at stake. For each thing that feels at stake, ask whether it concerns your virtue or vice. If it doesn’t, the claim that it is good or evil is false. Withhold assent from it, and assent to the true proposition in its place. Suspend any claim that is neither established nor shown false. (Test, Suspend, Replace: clauses (a) and (c).)
3. Ask: do I already know what fits? In the ordinary case a man knows what he should do and wants to do something else (The Decision Point). If you already know, no deliberation is needed. What remains is refusing the contrary desire, so go straight to step 7. Reaching for deliberation here is evasion of clause (b) dressed up as diligence (The Occasion Router, Route One).
4. Separate facts from value, and mark what is unverified (Route Two). Then ask the dependence question: does the fitting act depend on whether the fact is true, or only on its being unverified? If the unverified status alone settles the duty (for example, a duty to ask for the evidence), go to step 7 (Router, Section VI).
5. The genuine remainder. If you don’t yet see what fits, and it depends on the facts, run the SDF v3.3 in full: all six steps, the Factual Uncertainty Gate, and its named failure modes. Its result is a candidate action proposition, not a verdict.
6. Declare any domain knowledge the means require (SDF Check Three): medical, legal, financial or technical. The corpus governs the form of the act; the domain supplies the content of the means. Get that knowledge or act under a declared reservation. It is subordinate material and measures nothing.
7. Formulate the action proposition. It names the operative role or roles, the appropriate object of aim, the means, the manner (honest and fitting to the role), and the reservation: if it can be done. Bring it consciously to mind and assent to it. (Form the act: clause (d).)
8. Afterwards. If you acted correctly, assent that the specific act was appropriate (Recognize: clause (e)). If you slipped, trace back from the disturbance to the claim behind it, correct it, and make the next choice (Trace back: clause (d)). The outcome is never revisited as the measure of the decision (SLE Prop 63, from the Action Proposition Set, as cited in SDF v3.3).
IV. Worked Occasions
Drill 1. A job offer
- Scene: a better-paid post in another city.
- Claims: First: the money and the title would make my life go well; refusing would be a loss. Second: take it now, before it goes.
- Test: pay and title are things he would have, not what he is. The urgency is itself a sign of a false judgment (SDF Agent Check).
- True judgment: neither the post nor its refusal is good or evil. What is at stake is how he chooses.
- What to do: he does not yet see what fits, and the choice depends on facts: his family’s situation and the duties of his present post. Run the SDF in full. Then form the proposition: accept, or decline, as my roles as husband and employee direct, if it can be done.
- If already slipped: he accepted in a rush of wanting it. He traces the wanting back to “this is good for me,” corrects it, and reviews the decision on its merits. The earlier choice does not bind the next one.
Drill 2. An error you must report
- Scene: he has found a costly mistake of his own that the client hasn’t noticed.
- Claims: First: disclosing it will cost me standing and money. Second: wait and see whether it surfaces.
- Test: standing and money are indifferent. Concealment would be dishonest, and dishonesty is vice.
- True judgment: he already knows what fits. This is step 3, not deliberation.
- What to do: tell the client plainly, as his role requires, and propose the remedy, if it can be done.
- If already slipped: he waited a week. He discloses now, and says it was late.
Drill 3. A treatment decision under uncertainty
- Scene: a doctor offers surgery or monitoring, and the test results are ambiguous.
- Claims: First: the wrong choice would be a disaster. Second: choose whatever makes the fear stop.
- Test: health is a preferred indifferent, an appropriate object of aim but not a good. The fear rests on a false first claim.
- True judgment: the choice is his, and the result is not.
- What to do: Route Two runs first. The fitting act depends on the facts, so the SDF runs, and its Gate requires getting the missing fact where it can be got: ask for a second reading. Declare medical knowledge as required, and choose the means with a reservation broadened to cover the uncertainty.
- If already slipped: he chose in a panic. He traces the panic back to “this would be a disaster,” corrects it, and revisits the choice with his doctor if it can still be revisited.
V. What the Brief Is Not
- Not a list of pros and cons. A list weighs outcomes as if they were goods.
- Not a scoring matrix. Scored options turn the number into the verdict (The Subordination Test).
- Not a gut check. A strong feeling makes a claim loud, not true.
- Not “sleep on it” when he already knows what fits. That is delay of a known act.
- Not a shortened SDF. The SDF runs in full or not at all.
- Not an outcome review. Results never make a decision correct or incorrect after the fact.
VI. Checks Declared for This Build
- Subordination Test: facts, domain knowledge and the SDF’s output all enter as material for clause (d). The brief contains no score and no relief criterion.
- DTI: not yet run. It is offered for the operator’s ruling.
- Ratification: ratified 26 September 2026.
Declared Gaps
- The Decision Point, the Logic of Assent Instrument, and Excerpts 7 and 10 were not opened. They are cited through the Router, The Corpus as a Thinking System v1.7 and the SDF.
- The drills are the builder’s own constructions, not found cases.
- This is the Kit’s first build. Any place where the Kit’s method didn’t fit is a finding about the Kit. One such finding: the Kit’s drill schema has no slot for the sorting question in step 3. It may need one.
Version Note
v1.2 supersedes v1.1. Links are added to The Application Builder’s Kit v1.0 and to Sterling’s Framework for Personal Decision Making v3.3. Nothing else is changed.
v1.1 superseded v1.0. Two proposition citations are corrected. v1.0 labelled them “SDF Prop 38” and “SDF Prop 63.” Both are numbered in the SLE’s eighty Unified Stoic Propositions, which the SDF cites. Prop 38 is Sterling’s. Prop 63 belongs to the Action Proposition Set, Props 59–80, which is Dave Kelly’s, on Sterling’s theoretical foundations. Nothing else is changed.
v1.0. Draft v0.1 ratified 26 September 2026 and rendered with links to the documents it names.
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
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