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Executive Summary
- Emotion is not a reactive module or biologically hardwired essence, but an emergent construction rooted in prediction, interoception, and energetic regulation. This is the central claim of the Theory of Constructed Emotion (TCE).
- The TATi grammar (Tend–Align–Transcend–Integrate) views emotional states as coherence thresholds within the developmental arc of life unfolding. Emotions act as catalytic attractors guiding systemic transformation.
- Both TCE and TATi reject dualism and essentialism, proposing instead a monistic, relational, and holistic ontology of feeling.
- TCE grounds emotion in the body’s allostatic regulation — the predictive brain continuously balancing internal needs with external demands. Emotions are predictive signals of relevance, not pre-coded reactions.
- TATi complements this by extending emotion into the symbolic and cosmological domain, integrating physiological coherence with ethical, developmental, and existential dimensions of being.
- The paper identifies shared foundations — coherence, participation, context-sensitivity, embodied prediction — and critical divergences:
- TCE’s empirical emphasis vs. TATi’s symbolic breadth
- Minimal viable mechanisms vs. maximal generative potential
- Avoidance of metaphysical commitments vs. integration of metaphysics, ethics, and cosmogenesis
- The synthesis proposed reframes emotion as a multi-layered coherence event:
- Physiologically, a pattern of allostatic regulation
- Semiotically, a symbolic category co-constructed in context
- Teleodynamically, a signal of emergent alignment or dissonance
- Ethically, a guide toward regenerative flourishing
- This reframe holds transformative potential for healthcare, education, artificial intelligence, and planetary governance — making emotion central not only to human experience but to the healing and redesign of systems toward coherence.
- Call to action: Emotion science must evolve into a regenerative, coherence-centered discipline that honors the full dimensionality of life as energetic, symbolic, participatory, and transformative.