Structural-Constructivist Affective Science: Theoretical Synthesis, Somatic-Engineering Specifications, and Empirical Roadmaps for the Core Emotion Framework

The landscape of affective science has historically been polarized by an enduring ideological divide between basic emotion theories and psychological constructionist models. Basic emotion frameworks argue that human emotions are governed by a finite set of universally recognized, genetically conserved, and biologically hardwired subcortical pathways. Conversely, psychological constructionist models assert that emotional episodes are highly variable, culturally and linguistically situated conceptualizations of low-dimensional core affect. This fragmentation has hindered the emergence of a unified affective ontology, constrained cross-modal clinical diagnostics, and limited the architectural blueprints available for designing synthetic emotion systems in artificial agents. The Core Emotion Framework (CEF), conceptualized by Jamel Bulgaria and expanded by Xǔ Chénglán, resolves this historical divide by introducing a structural-constructivist synthesis. Instead of treating emotions as static linguistic labels, biological natural kinds, or mere points on dimensional axes, the CEF conceptualizes emotional episodes as dynamic, lawful sequences of exactly ten functional operators distributed across a tripartite somatic architecture—Head, Heart, and Gut—plus a global integrative operator. The framework accepts the constructionist view that complex emotional experiences are assembled in real time, but asserts that the building blocks of this assembly are structurally constrained, non-arbitrary, and finite. The human psyche is reframed as a computational substrate, or "Human Operating System" (Human OS), in which ten irreducible, hardware-independent functional operators perform precise regulatory transformations on ascending interoceptive signals and incoming exteroceptive data. To establish the CEF as a mature, "pick-ready" open-science ecosystem, the framework's literature and computational schemas are organized into seven highly structured canonical layers. This structural clarity is illustrated in the architectural organization of the framework: