Proofs

These checks run on the tables. “Holds” means the sentence follows from the cells.

Order	Domain	States	Was	Result
1	Kratos	Conform-Resist	Rules	Confrontation
2	Telos	Product-Craft	Means-Ends	Production
3	Eros	Egoism-Altruism	Relationships	Definition
4	Logos	Mastery-Power	Transactions	Victory (Love)

Who uproots whom

• Kratos uproots Eros. Rules accepted or rejected decide what can be most loved. Defeated by Ignorance through Amnesis.
• Telos uproots nothing, but merely expedites. Outside the loop. Defeated by Procrastination.
• Eros uproots Logos. What is loved decides how the world is seen. Defeated by Disgust through Disdain.
• Logos uproots Kratos. Those perceptions decide which rules still stand. Defeated by Corruption.

Rank is a line: Kratos, Telos, Eros, Logos. Issues are not that line. Each of the three can uproot the next, and Telos cannot alone.

Reason – Diligent Dozen

Each virtue is one aspect of Reason at one moment.

Aspect	Awareness	Propriety	Morality	Spirit
Honesty	1. Magnanimity	3. Temperance	2. Honour	4. Loyalty
Analysis	8. Prudence	5. Excellence	9. Ethics	12. Willpower
Perseverance	6. Patience	7. Conservation	10. Justice	11. Courage

Materiality – Dirty Dozen

Opposite aspect and opposite moment of each virtue. 

Aspect	Ignorance	Lust	Apathy	Fear
Conceit	1. Amnesis	3. Obsession	2. Disdain	4. Hubris
Confusion	8. Delusion	5. Envy	9. Corruption	12. Cowardice
Sloth	6. Dependence	7. Greed	10. Procrastination	11. Absolutism

The checks

Table 1 – Holds

1. Reversal domains: Rules, Means–Ends, Relationships, Transactions.
2. Distinct: yes. Count: 4.
3. Resurrexit state-pairs: Conform-Resist, Product-Craft, Egoism-Altruism, Mastery-Power.

Issues form a 3-cycle – Holds

1. Kratos → Eros. Eros → Logos. Logos → Kratos.
2. Telos uproots nothing.
3. Kratos uproots Eros. Rules accepted or rejected have a massive impact upon what can be loved.
4. Eros uproots Logos. What is loved decides how the world is seen.
5. Logos uproots Kratos. Those perceptions decide which rules still stand.
6. A 3-cycle. Each of the three can uproot the next. Rank order is a different relation.

Preorder is total – Holds

1. Kratos 1, Telos 2, Eros 3, Logos 4.
2. Ranks are unique and complete. The order is a total preorder, and there is nothing definable outside of it.

Defeats also follow the preorder – Holds

1. Ignorance, Procrastination, Disgust, Corruption – one to a domain, in rank order.
2. Kratos is defeated by Ignorance through Amnesis. Eros is defeated by Disgust through Disdain. 

Universal imbalance is possible through Logos only – Holds

1. Kratos, Telos, Eros: particular. Logos: universal.
2. One universal contact, and it is the fourth domain.

Eight states partition – Holds

1. Specific: Conform, Product, Egoism, Mastery.
2. Nonspecific: Resist, Craft, Altruism, Power.
3. Eight names, none repeated, two to a domain.

Reason cells and their material inverses – Holds

1. Twelve cells. Three aspects of Reason across four moments revealing them.
2. Each sin is the opposite aspect of Materiality at the opposite moment. (Sloth is the aspect in four sins opposite four virtues of Perseverance, for instance.)

Register

All 16. Filter by the mark: 7 proved, 2 supported, 3 indicated and likely, 4 untested.

Four domains, reformed and renamed Parts 1–2 · Proved

Resurrexit’s Kratos and Telos are largely Reversal’s two domains under new names however Eros and Logos represent fundamental intertwined reformations. It is a new system, but it is also an evolution.

• Roe 2023, Table 1 – Telos ↔ means–ends (telic/paratelic), Kratos ↔ rules (conformist/negativistic), Logos ↔ transactions (mastery), Eros ↔ relationships (sympathy).

Would falsify it. A fifth Resurrexit domain with no reversal counterpart, or a study which demonstrated a disconnection between power and mastery with social relationships, or vice versa; similarly, logically disconnecting Logos’s primary oversight of the other three domains would also accomplish this.

The issue cycle Part 2 · Proved

Kratos uproots Eros, Eros uproots Logos, and Logos uproots Kratos. Telos is an expedient of these processes.

• Roe 2023, Table 2, ISSUES row – Telos: None. Kratos: Eros. Eros: Logos. Logos: Kratos. The arrow is causal: the rules one keeps or rejects unsettle what one loves; what one loves unsettles perception; perception unsettles which rules still stand.

Would falsify it. Any other issue arrow, or Telos creating an issue for another domain in and of itself.

The preorder Part 2 · Proved

The domains are totally preordered: Kratos (1, directive), Telos (2, informative), Eros (3, relative), Logos (4, objective).

• Roe 2023, Table 2, PREORDERED row – Ranks 1-4 are unique and land on Kratos, Telos, Eros, Logos.

Would falsify it. A repeated rank, a missing rank, or a different domain on a rank.

Defeat follows the preorder Part 2 · Proved

What defeats each domain is lined up with the preorder: Ignorance, then Procrastination, then Disgust, then Corruption.

• Roe 2023, Table 2, DEFEAT-by – Kratos: Ignorance through Amnesis. Telos: Procrastination. Eros: Disgust through Disdain. Logos: Corruption.

This proves the column is ordered and logically sound. It does not prove the later sentence that each defeat precipitates the next, there are qualitative lived proofs for this.

Would falsify it. A defeat label that breaks the preorder, or two domains sharing a defeat.

Only Logos imbalances universally Part 2 · Proved

Imbalance costs particularity in Kratos, Telos, and Eros, and universality in Logos alone.

Follows from the published table. Data not required.

• Roe 2023, Table 2, IMBALANCE-cost – Three particulars, one universal, and the universal is Logos. Logos as discourse includes words, language, and even mathematics as additional orders of communication. Discourse, the Word, is intrinsically universal as universally descriptive and capable.

Would falsify it. A second universal cell, or Logos marked particular.

Eight states, two per domain Part 2 · Proved

The eight states partition into four specific poles (Conform, Product, Egoism, Mastery) and four nonspecific poles (Resist, Craft, Altruism, Power).

• Roe 2023, Table 4 – Each domain contributes exactly one specific and one nonspecific state. Names do not repeat.

Would falsify it. A repeated state name, or a domain with two states on the same side.

Twelve virtues, twelve inverse sins Part 5 · Proved

Each virtue is one aspect of Reason (Honesty, Analysis, or Perseverance) at one moment of demonstration (Awareness, Propriety, Morality, or Spirit). Its inverse sin is the opposite aspect of Materiality (Conceit, Confusion, or Sloth) at the opposite moment of demonstration (Ignorance, Lust, Apathy, or Fear).

• Roe 2023, Structural Virtues, and the Diligent Dozen / Dirty Dozen charts – Magnanimity/Amnesis, Honour/Disdain, Temperance/Obsession, Loyalty/Hubris, Excellence/Envy, Patience/Dependence, Conservation/Greed, Prudence/Delusion, Ethics/Corruption, Justice/Procrastination, Courage/Absolutism, Willpower/Cowardice. Sloth is the aspect opposite Perseverance, not Willpower’s sin.

Would falsify it. A repeated cell, a sin that is not the opposite Materiality cell, or a count other than 12.

Father absence and violent offending Part 7 · Supported · 2.03 IRR

Fatherless boys and girls have substantially higher rates of criminality. (Of course this is NOT saying all have higher rates of crime, these are averages and do not account for all individuals.)

A published dataset matches the sentence’s direction at a stated size.

• Mok, Astrup, Carr, Antonsen, Webb & Pedersen 2018, American Journal of Preventive Medicine – Danish register cohort, births 1971–1997, N = 1,346,772. Separated from father at the 15th birthday: incidence rate ratio 2.03 (95% CI 1.98–2.08) for later violent offending versus continuous coresidence with both parents. Males 1.95. Females 2.97. Separation from the father already at birth: IRR 1.78. Associations were stronger for fathers than mothers through mid-childhood, rose with the number of separations, and shrank after parental socioeconomic adjustment but did not disappear.
• Institute for Family Studies, NLSY97 analysis, 2022 – Young men who did not grow up with their biological father were about twice as likely to have spent time in jail by around age 30. The association remained after controls for family income, race, maternal education, age, and AFQT.

The association is large and, in the Danish cohort, population-wide. It is not yet “fathers generate civilisation,” and it is not a pure causal effect. McLanahan, Tach & Schneider (2013, Annual Review of Sociology) show that selection explains a real share of father-absence gaps; what remains is smaller and uneven across outcomes.

Would falsify it. A population register in which paternal coresidence has a violence IRR whose confidence interval covers 1.0 after the pre-registered demographic controls — or a design that reduces the Danish estimate to a negligible causal effect.

Fathers and finishing college Part 7 · Supported · 35% vs 14%

A present father raises the chance a young man completes a higher education and a lawful life.

A published dataset matches the sentence’s direction at a stated size.

• Institute for Family Studies, NLSY97, 2022 – Young men raised with their biological father were more than twice as likely to graduate college by their late 20s (35% vs 14%). After race, family income, maternal education, age, and AFQT, father presence still about doubled the likelihood of graduating.
• Wilcox, Herrin, Smith & Wang 2024, Institute for Family Studies – Young men from non-intact families were more likely to have been in prison than to have graduated college; those raised by married biological parents showed the reverse. Outside an intact family, odds of prison or jail roughly doubled after controls for race, mother’s education, and childhood poverty. “Intact” is broader than father-presence alone.

Hard as a description of young men in these U.S. cohorts. Not yet shown for daughters’ degrees in the same tables, and not a license to treat every non-residential father as a missing cause. The causal review cited under the violence claim applies here too.

Would falsify it. The college gap closing to about 1.0 after the same controls in a pre-registered replication, or a sibling design in which the father-absent brother shows no educational penalty.

Power without mastery Part 3 · Indicated and Likely · 1,712 effects

Power without mastery will always be corrupt.

Indicated by a published result, and likely on the essay’s reading.

• Sabey, Shanklin, Colquitt & Baer 2025, Psychological Bulletin – Meta-analysis of Keltner’s approach–inhibition theory: 1,712 effect sizes, 813 samples, 269,534 people. Power tracks disinhibited, approach-heavy behavior, largely through affect. The theory is broadly supported. The same literature records prosocial uses of power.
• Vazsonyi, Mikuška & Kelley 2017, Journal of Criminal Justice – Self-control and deviance: mean r = 0.415 cross-sectionally and 0.345 longitudinally. Self-command, the nearest measured stand-in for mastery, is among the stronger behavioral correlates of deviance. It is not identical to Roe’s mastery.

Disinhibition is not precisely the same construct as corruption, and power without self-command is risky rather than universally corrupt.

Would falsify it. A powered, preregistered proved interaction in which high felt power and low self-control do not raise unethical choices above either factor alone – or a demonstration that the interaction is positive and reliable, which would upgrade the lemma from indicated to supported without ever licensing “always.”

Protocol. Cross the Sense of Power scale with the Brief Self-Control Scale. Outcome: a preregistered unethical-choice task. Predict a positive interaction (high power × low self-control). Power the study at 90% for a small interaction. 

Religion and getting into less trouble Parts 3 and 6 · Indicated and Likely · 60 studies

Spiritual and religious life produces pro-social conduct, and more exuberant religious communities outcompete mundane ones.

Indicated by a published result, and likely on the essay’s reading. The wording is still stronger than the study.

• Baier & Wright 2001, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency – Meta-analysis of 60 studies. Religious belief and behavior exert a moderate deterrent effect on criminal behavior. Studies disagree on size because they measure religion and crime differently. A moderate average is not a group-selection result.

The individual deterrent association is the part with data. “Communities with more exuberant behaviors out-competed more mundane groups,” and “this selection happens no matter the religious situation,” are not what those 60 studies tested. When morality is front and centre in focus, this is what is selected for in partners: compatible, complementary personality and behaviour, moreso than ever.

Would falsify it. A preregistered multilevel model in which congregational intensity fails to predict lower member offending once individual religiosity is controlled – that would kill the community clause while leaving Baier & Wright standing. A null individual association in a new 60-study meta would leave the personal clause for explicable power.

Protocol. Separate individual devotion from congregational practice with perhaps third-party confirmations. Outcome: official offending, not only self-report. Predict a congregational coefficient below zero after the individual control. 

Honesty tracks less exploitation Part 5 · Indicated and Likely · 32% vs 19%

Virtues are skills in reason, and the Honesty aspect is the one that keeps a person from using others. Low honesty is the entrance and capstone to the deeper sins.

Indicated by a published result, and likely. 

• Zettler, Thielmann, Hilbig & Moshagen 2020 – Nomological net of HEXACO: 426 meta-analyses, 436 samples, 3,893 effects. Honesty–Humility maps onto exploitation (the willingness to use other people) and not onto the other five outcome domains. Nearest measured neighbor of Roe’s Honesty, not the same twelve virtues.
• 2019 meta-analysis, personality and workplace deviance – HEXACO domains accounted for 31.97% of the variance in workplace deviance, against 19.05% for the Big Five. Honesty–Humility was the strongest HEXACO predictor.

Supports “honesty protects against using people.” The largest character-strengths instrument (VIA, 24 strengths) is a different taxonomy; non-match is not disproof, it is reflections of common purpose.

Would falsify it. A scale built on these twelve names that fails to predict exploitation beyond Honesty–Humility, or a longitudinal study in which the stated acquisition order is proved reversed.

Spiritual mate selection Part 6 · Untested

Spiritual mate selection enabled more advanced displacement of instincts in humans, and the flexible judgement of a mate’s compensatory traits is the most advantaged trait across generations, especially in civilisation and high (truly spiritual) culture.

No adequate dataset. A protocol is attached.

• Buss 1989, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (adjacent only) – 37 cultures, 10,047 people. Both sexes ranked kindness and intelligence at the top of mate preferences, ahead of many status cues. That is consistent with caring about mental character. It does not test an instinct-displacing mechanism or compensatory “negative-image” selection.

No dataset cited, and none assembled here, identifies “spiritual mate selection” as a measured variable. Schopenhauer 1818 and Gerrans 2002 are arguments, not tests. Roe 2021, cited in Part 7, is about aunt/uncle bias toward nieces and nephews, not this mechanism.

Would falsify it. Anything that would count: a preregistered mate-choice study in which a preference for partners who specifically compensate for a self-judged weakness in their own selection, and that this preference predicts relationship stability or offspring outcomes beyond kindness, intelligence, and resources, most especially in their own selection. Phylogeny stays out of reach of a survey. It would be difficult to account for environmental factors in this process but sexual and dating behaviours surveys would prove of great assistance.

Protocol. Have each respondent name a trait they judge weak in themselves, then rank prospective partners who are strong there versus strong where the respondent is already strong. Prediction: compensatory partners are preferred, and the preference is larger in people who score high on reflective self-judgement and preference for self-judgement in others. Falsified if the preferences are null or negatively associated once rated characteristics are covaried with others.

Extremism blocks Logos Part 3 · Untested

Extremism in a nonspecific state collapses into empty universality; extremism in a specific state collapses into particularity; either one keeps a person out of a balanced Logos.

No adequate dataset. A protocol is attached.

• No published test under these constructs – Reversal Theory has domain-level studies. Nobody has published the extremity → blocked-Logos path as defined in Logos (mastery and power, both, without either crowding the other out).

Would falsify it. Partial correlation of within-domain extremity with a Logos-balance score ≥ 0 in a preregistered sample. The self-assay is an idiographic form of this test, not the sample.

Protocol. N ≥ 300. Forced choice plus a both-poles rating, so extremity (|specific – nonspecific|) is separable from elevation. Logos balance: both mastery and felt power above the median and |mastery – power| small. Predict a negative partial correlation of extremity with that balance after mean activation. The self-assay uses the same scoring rule on one person and labels it as such.

Ignorance precipitates the rest Part 2 · Untested

Ignorance precipitates procrastination, which misdirects disgust, which contributes to corruption.

No adequate dataset. A protocol is attached.

• The alignment is proved  – Table 2 lines the four defeats up with the preorder. The precipitation sentence adds causes. No path model of these four variables, under these names, is in the literature assembled here. Arrows and directions need confirmation yet remain logically sound as aligned.

Would falsify it. A longitudinal model in which ignorance at time 1 does not predict procrastination at time 2, or the indirect path through disgust to a corruption measure is indistinguishable from zero. Cross-sectional co-occurrence would not be enough to call it proved.

Protocol. Four waves, the four defeat items used in the assay (or better behavioral proxies: knowledge tests, task latency, avoidance of value-tradeoffs, an unethical-choice task). Predict the ordered indirect effect. A single sitting with a self-assay can only show whether the pattern is present in a person as correlating with other factors, making for decent qualitative proofs but what is needed here is more.

Altruism needs a product Part 3 · Untested

Sustainable, beneficial altruism is impossible without the knowledge afforded by product and goals.

No adequate dataset. A protocol is attached.

• No direct test – Warm-glow and effective-altruism research is about a different question (whether giving feels good, whether giving is effective). No current studies cross an altruism axis with a product axis.

Would falsify it. People high in other-regarding allocation and low in product/goal focus who nevertheless sustain an effective benefit over time. One lab hour of generosity would not falsify “sustainable.”

Protocol. Pair a dictator or charity-allocation task with a goal-completion diary over eight weeks. Predict that high allocation plus low product focus decays, and high allocation plus high product focus does not. Decay is thus the outcome of extended imbalance.

Method

How a sentence gets its mark

Resurrexit Spiritus is a philosophical system with empirical ambitions: fatherhood, crime, mate choice, power, virtue. Ambition is not data. This bench separates three kinds of work and does not let one impersonate another.

1. Formal. If a sentence is a relation among the published cells — the renaming, the issue cycle, the preorder, the defeat column, the sin pairs — it is checked against those cells. You can open every step.
2. Empirical. A sentence is supported only when a published study matches its direction at a size we quote. Indicated and likely means a neighbor construct has the data (self-control for mastery, Honesty–Humility for the Honesty aspect) or the association is real and the wording is stronger than the study.
3. Untested. Spiritual mate selection, the precipitation arrows, extremity blocking Logos, and altruism that lasts only when there is a product, do not have a dataset under these names. Each carries a protocol with a result that would kill it. The assay is the one-person form of two of those protocols. It is labeled as such so it cannot be waved around as proof.

Association is not the essay’s strongest causal wording. The Danish father-separation result is enormous and still not “fathers generate civilisation.” McLanahan, Tach and Schneider’s 2013 review is the caution kept next to the supported father claims: selection explains a share, and what is left is smaller. Numbers were taken from abstracts and published tables, not recomputed from microdata. Where a DOI is linked, follow it.

Adjacent is not identical. Reversal Theory’s telic pair has a 1985 laboratory result. Resurrexit’s renaming of that pair is a formal bijection, not a new experiment. HEXACO Honesty–Humility predicts exploitation. It does not certify Magnanimity through Willpower as an acquisition order, however it very much lends itself.

Source text: 24k.cc/resurrexitspiritus. Dr. Marcus Aurelius Roe, 24K Journal of Virtues Science, 2023.