DOI: Crossref DOI pending · Also available as 10.5281/zenodo.23676658
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@techreport{cezjah2026wp04,
author = {C{\'e}zjah},
title = {The Constructivist Computational Model of Emotions: Computational Preparation and Interpretive Commitment},
institution = {New Intellectual LLC},
address = {Miami, FL},
type = {Working paper},
number = {4},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://newintellectual.com/pages/how-to-design-an-emotion-wp-04},
note = {Crossref DOI pending. Also available as https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23676658}
}Abstract
Computational models of emotion usually treat emotion as the output of appraisal. I present the Constructivist Computational Model of Emotions (CCME), a small, hypothetical, executable specification that draws the line elsewhere. In the CCME, computation prepares and stops. Predictive simulation, allostatic regulation of the body budget, retrieval of category schemas, and weighting under prediction error narrow the field of possible interpretations, form a situated referent, and rank candidate concepts. Emotion begins only when an agent interprets that referent against a concept’s identity conditions under a governing goal, commits to the concept, and marks the commitment with an identifier. I call the transition the meaning boundary. The model separates learned category schemas, which predict and rank, from emotion concepts, which fix admissibility; it separates a default hedonic-regulatory goal, under which a system attributes, from a goal an agent adopts for the act, under which the agent interprets; and it locates error in the commitment, so that a feeling can remain accurate while the interpretation bound to it fails. Two C# programs check these distinctions: one prepares a full trace and constructs no emotion, and one constructs fear or interest from the same snake under different goals. What is new is a hard boundary between computational preparation and interpretive commitment.
Contents
- 1. Introduction: Where Computation Stops
- 2. Terms
- 3. The Architecture
- 4. Preparation: Simulation, Regulation, and the Referent
- 5. Retrieval, Ranking, and Learning
- 6. Goals and the Meaning Boundary
- 7. Two Executable Specifications
- 8. What Is Shared and What Is New
- 9. Scope and Limits
- 10. Conclusion
- Appendix: Code, UML Diagrams, and Input/Output
- References
Relation to the book
This paper restates, in new prose, Appendix K of How to Design an Emotion (Cézjah 2026, app. K). The book is the full treatment.
Record
- Constructivist Computational Model of Emotions
- computational models of emotion
- meaning boundary
- interpretive commitment
- situated referent
- category schema
- emotion concept
- allostasis
- predictive processing
- appraisal engines
- Unified Modeling Language
- semiotics
- executable specification
- Emotional Constructivism
- Constructivist Semiotics
- Constructivist Semiotic Sign
- Constructivist Semiotic Model of Emotions
- Theory of Constrained Identity
- Emotionese
- Emotional Meaning Architecture
- Constructivist Linguistics of Emotion
- misattribution
- affect, feeling, and emotion
- theory of emotion
- concept theory
- affective science
- philosophy of emotion
- affective neuroscience
- social and affective neuroscience
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