The Enactive Foundations of Affective Architecture: Strengthening the Core Emotion Framework through Participatory Sense-Making, Intercorporeal Coupling, and Kinesthetic Entrainment

This paper strengthens the Core Emotion Framework (CEF) by integrating it with contemporary enactive affective science, intercorporeal coupling research, and the ontological architecture of the Quantum Tathagatagarbha Manifestation Model (QTMM). The resulting synthesis reframes the CEF from a primarily psychological model into a multi-level, somatic–computational–ontological system grounded in 4E cognition, dynamical systems theory, and East Asian metaphysics. Drawing on Giovanna Colombetti’s enactive theory of affectivity, the paper reconceives the CEF’s three somatic centers—Head, Heart, and Gut—as conformal boundary states that process interoceptive information through ten functional operators, generating subjective emotional episodes as bulk emergent phenomena. A formal operator algebra is introduced, including a non-linear difference equation governing operator activation, eigenvalue bounded stability constraints, and multi-agent coupling matrices that mathematically model participatory sense-making, mutual incorporation, and relational breakdowns such as solipsistic drift. The integration of rhythmic entrainment, groove theory, and interbrain synchronization research further demonstrates how affective meaning emerges through embodied coordination, kinesthetic entrainment, and shared temporal structures. By uniting enactive affectivity, somatic topography, quantum inspired boundary dynamics, and computational operator modeling, this paper establishes a unified, biologically grounded, and relationally situated architecture for affective life, significantly expanding the theoretical, clinical, and computational scope of the Core Emotion Framework. Keywords Core Emotion Framework; enactive affectivity; participatory sense-making; intercorporeal coupling; rhythmic entrainment; somatic centers; operator algebra; conformal boundary dynamics; QTMM; embodied cognition; groove; neural synchronization; dynamical systems; affective architecture; multi-agent modeling.