Unified Structural-Constructivist Ontology of Affect: Integrating the Core Emotion Framework, Constraint Theory, and Embodied Neurobiological Dynamics

This paper develops a unified structural constructivist ontology of affect by integrating Constraint Theory, the Core Emotion Framework (CEF), and contemporary neurobiological models of interoception and predictive processing. Constraint Theory provides the foundational metaphysics: determinacy arises through exclusion relations, distinguishing type level openness from token level actualization. The CEF builds on this ontology by modeling emotions as dynamic sequences of ten irreducible somatic operators distributed across cephalic, cardiac, and enteric control centers, each functioning as an active transformation of the interoceptive landscape rather than a passive feeling state. This architecture dissolves the historical cognitivist vs. neo Jamesian divide by showing that emotional episodes are neither propositional judgements nor brute bodily feelings, but unified constraint propagation processes that are simultaneously intentional, embodied, and evolutionarily conserved. The framework further formalizes affective dynamics using quantum like contextuality, Hilbert space representations, and Kuramoto synchronization models to capture non separable operator fusions under chronic dysregulation. By grounding emotional experience in a single, coherent ontology spanning metaphysics, psychology, and neuroscience, the paper resolves Deigh’s “warm chest, cold feet” dilemma and establishes a mathematically explicit foundation for both natural and synthetic affective systems. Keywords: Constraint Theory; Core Emotion Framework; Structural Constructivist Ontology; Affective Operators; Predictive Interoception; Quantum Like Contextuality; Non Separability; Somatic Neuroscience; Emotion Theory; Cognitive Affective Integration.