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By Dave Kelly

Sunday, November 08, 2026

Robertson’s Autumn Pieces and Three Practices: Fisher, Shipley and Sterling v0.1

 

Robertson’s Autumn Pieces and Three Practices: Fisher, Shipley and Sterling v0.1

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

Donald Robertson published seven pieces on his Substack between 29 September and 29 October 2026. This document sets each against the practices of Chris Fisher, Courtney Shipley and Grant C. Sterling. It also tests them against a standing finding on Robertson’s lessons: that no exercise asks the reader to judge the feared external not evil (R-2026-10-07-01).

The Beginning (The Chain Located In Sterling's Texts)

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. The truth about value is that only virtue is good and only vice is evil. Everything else is indifferent.

Copied from Epictetus’ Own Summary: The Value Doctrine in Enchiridion 1 v0.1, which copies it from CDV/DTI Reference Suite v0.5.4 — Three Worked Cases.

Key

Definitions

  • Th 10: “The only thing actually good is virtue, the only thing actually evil is vice.” (Core Stoicism)
  • The value claim: the judgment that an external is not evil, from Th 10.
  • Moderation: making a value judgment less extreme instead of correcting it to indifferent.

Summary

The standing finding still holds for the exercises. Two essays, on cost-benefit analysis and on the premeditation of anger, come closer to the corpus than anything audited before.

1. Stoic Cost-Benefit Analysis (6 October)

This is the closest of the seven. Robertson has Marcus say that praise, wealth and pleasure are “different in kind” from the rational good. He says an external event does not arrive with a plus or minus sign attached. That is the value claim.

He then makes the standard optional. The reader may adopt “a more flexible definition of the fundamental goal,” or take “self-improvement” as a provisional goal. For Sterling, the standard is not provisional: the Beginning derives it. Fisher would supply it from Nature.

2. Stoic Premeditation of Anger (15 October)

This is the second closest. Robertson quotes Meditations 11.18 on letting go of “the judgment that you have been harmed,” and Seneca’s question whether a pillow can make you more honorable. Both correct the harm judgment.

He recasts assent as “cognitive fusion,” and that takes the act of will away. For Sterling, assent is the act, and it is the only thing in our control. This is a C2 matter.

His remedy also runs by delay and remission. The corpus retired the interception model in favour of the standing disposition and the recovery audit.

Fisher’s discipline of action opens from the same Meditations 2.1. He reads kinship as grounded in the cosmos; Robertson reads it as tolerance.

3. Lesson 4, How to Find Strength in Your Own Character (29 September)

Robertson says unpleasant feelings are “dispreferred indifferents,” not “bad” or “harmful.” That is the value claim, but it is made about the feeling, not the feared event.

The exercise asks the reader to accept the anxiety and name his values. It never asks him to judge the feared presentation or rejection not evil. The finding therefore stands for the exercise, with the feeling as the one exception.

His instruction to accept the feelings and let them come and go is close to Shipley’s rule against hostility to impressions (Shipley CPA, P6). The difference is that Shipley guides impressions until they root, while Robertson lets them pass.

4. Lesson 5, Putting Your Problems into Perspective (13 October)

The time-projection exercise asks whether the event would be seen as “an unfortunate setback but not a massive catastrophe.” That is moderation: the event stays unfortunate, only less so. The corpus corrects the judgment to indifferent, not to less bad.

Fisher’s cosmic viewpoint asks the reader to trust that the event serves a purpose. Robertson’s view from above changes no value judgment; it only widens the scale.

Robertson quotes Meditations 9.30, that reputation has no real value, but the exercise does not ask for that judgment.

5. How to Use Rational Emotive Imagery (27 October)

Ellis calls the triggering events bad outright (“bad Activating Events”). The goal is to swap unhealthy negative emotions for “healthy” ones: sorrow, regret, remorse and concern.

That runs against two rulings. On 26 September 2026 Dave Kelly ruled that grief is by definition a false value judgment. On 27 September 2026 he ruled that grieving over one’s own past wrong is the same false claim, and that aidōs is the right response. This piece is the clearest case of moderation, which Dave Kelly holds Sterling calls wrong; the International Stoic Forum locus has not yet been found.

Its instruction to sit with the unhealthy feeling for a minute resembles Shipley’s somatic side.

6. Commentary on Enchiridion 41 (29 October)

The virtues are one, and self-discipline in the pursuit of wealth is a vice. This is close to the corpus on the unity of virtue, and nothing in it conflicts.

7. Commentary on Enchiridion 40 (8 October)

This appears to be the commentary already answered in Enchiridion 40: Hope, Honour and the Girl’s Own Assent v0.2. There is nothing new to add.

Where the Four Stand

  • Sterling puts the value claim first and makes it non-negotiable.
  • Fisher holds the value claim and grounds it in providence.
  • Robertson states the value claim in exposition, most clearly in the cost-benefit and anger pieces. He moderates it in his exercises and drops it with Ellis.
  • Shipley has no value claim on record. His practice works on the impression, not on the judgment.

What This Document Does Not Claim

  • It makes no finding on the paid portions of Lessons 4 and 5, which carry audio and worksheets, or on Lesson 6.
  • It does not amend R-2026-10-07-01. Whether to narrow that finding to “the feared external” is left for ruling.
  • Fisher’s cosmic-viewpoint method is taken from outside answers, not from his own pages, which were not opened.
  • Shipley’s practice is taken from his CPA run, whose record is one post and one thread.
  • The comparisons are Dave Kelly’s synthesis. Sterling’s name stands on Th 10 and the Beginning.

Sources

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

posted by Dave | 12:43 AM

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