Emotion as Constitutive of Consciousness: A Predictive Processing Framework for Autonomous Experience

Abstract

The paper proposes a radical reconceptualization of emotion's role in consciousness: rather than responding to reality, emotion actively generates the experiential world through predictive processing. Integrating Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle with Lisa Feldman Barrett's constructed emotion theory, we demonstrate that affective states function as the primordial prediction layer, transducing abstract pattern recognition into embodied meaning 200-400ms before conceptual thought emerges. This framework positions emotion as ontologically primary, serving as the dimensionality reduction through which infinite sensory possibilities crystallize into lived experience. Archetypes emerge within this model as high-level attractor patterns, stable configurations in predictive space that recur across cultures due to shared embodiment, universal developmental trajectories, and evolutionary optimization. Narratives subsequently provide temporal coherence, binding affective-archetypal experiences into meaningful sequences that are reality-constitutive rather than merely descriptive. We extend this framework to universal scales, proposing that consciousness operates at nested hierarchies from quantum to cosmic levels, with individual experience representing localized instantiations of universal intelligence. Physical constraints emerge from multi-agent predictive coherence rather than imposed laws, positioning diversity of perspective as metaphysically necessary for stable reality. The paper presents testable predictions regarding emotional precision, archetypal priming, narrative intervention, and collective synchronization, alongside implications for therapeutic transformation, contemplative practice, and participatory cosmology. This naturalistic framework bridges scientific rigor with mystical insight, offering a middle path between sterile materialism and naive idealism.