Table 4. Situating Existing Theoretical Constructs within the Human Affectome.

This table summarizes meaning—and senses of meaning—of existing theoretical constructs of affective phenomena, situating them within the algorithmic organization of the Human Affectome. Within the entries below, references to relevant theoretical accounts are bolded; references to other theoretical constructs within this table are bolded and italicized; and references to the Human Affectome are italicized. References included here supplement citations in the main body of the text.

Theoretical Construct	Sense	Situated Within Human Affectome
Affect	1. all affective phenomena	Affectome: all of the specified constituents of an organism’s system of algorithms for affective phenomena, considered collectively or in total. The Human Affectome.
	2. aspects that characterize affective phenomena	Affective features: the dimensional metrics of the organism’s own performance in predictive adaptation, integral to all affective concerns, and reflected in qualitative aspects of affective experience. See valence and arousal. Affective Features.
	3. valence and arousal (core affect; Russell, 2003; Russell et al., 1989; Posner et al., 2005; Kuppens et al., 2013); sometimes also dominance (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974; Bakker et al., 2014)	See valence and arousal. Affective Features. Dominance can be seen as the manner in which the human organism is poised to act upon the world (see appraisal in Table 3); Affective Concerns. It can also be seen as the sense of agency the agent has or sense of control over intended outcomes or goal; Conclusions.
Affordance	actionability features of objects in the environment	To execute operations, Affective Concerns.
Allostasis	predictive process to maintain stability despite change	Dynamic regulation and navigation within a complex and changing environment in order to anticipate the approach of a fatal state before it approaches, i.e., to safeguard homeostasis. See homeostasis. To execute operations.
Allostatic load	chronic burden on allostasis	The repeated surpassing of an organism’s adaptive capabilities in anticipating its own needs due to a persistently difficult environment, usually consisting of persistent acute stress, resulting in chronic stress (i.e., bearing allostatic load). See allostasis and stress. To execute operations.
Algorithm	description of process	Sequences of steps executed for the sake of a goal. The Human Affectome.
Arousal	an aspect of affective experience	The metric of excitation, activation, or energy mobilization within different systems indicating the urgency to act; reflected in the aspect of intensity of an affective experience; measured as magnitude from low to high for each kind of arousal based on the system of interest or as a whole (e.g., wakefulness, emotional arousal, sexual arousal, physical activity, attention, etc.). Affective Feature: Arousal.
Attractor states	configurations that a complex system is attracted to (see connectionism and dynamical systems in Table 3)	To ensure viability and in executing operations, a complex organism will hover around states of relative stability.
Comfort zone	set of states	Range of comfortable states which an organism seeks to sustain. See allostasis. To execute operations.
Consciousness	1. qualitative state	See feeling. To enact relevance.
	2. phenomenology	See feeling: phenomenology. To enact relevance.
	3. higher-order, reflective experience	See metacognition. To entertain abstraction.
Emotion	a type of affective experience	Affective experiences grounded in algorithms that reflect operational concerns, implications of an object’s actionability in terms of sophisticated sequences of actions.
Episodes	duration of time	Affective experiences are episodes of experience. To enact relevance.
Expression	articulation of affective phenomenon through implicit or explicit means	Human organisms express affective phenomena to communicate with others as part of their adaptive operations. To entertain abstraction.
Feeling	1. affective experiences	First-person, conscious mental states with qualitative character that is experienced which reflect affective algorithms. To enact relevance.
	2. aspect of experience (felt)	Raw qualitative aspect that marks all experience. See qualia. To enact relevance.
	3. experience	Having a what it’s like and rich structure. See qualia and phenomenology. To enact relevance.
	4. metacognitive awareness	Higher-order, reflective conscious awareness of being in an affective state; can sometimes be verbalized in subjective report. See subjective report. To entertain abstraction, Conclusions.
Goal	1. final state that explains development (Aristotle, 1999)	As a dynamic, complex system, the human organism is not seeking, whether implicitly or explicitly, a final state. It can be considered a self-producing and self-distinguishing act. See enactive: autopoiesis in Table 3. To ensure viability.
	2. purpose that explains certain capacities or characteristics (Mayr, 1998, 1985; Cartwright, 1986; Schlosser, 1998; McLaughlin, 2000; Ward et al., 2017)	A Teleological Principle, an assumption about what purpose explains capacities and characteristics associated with affective phenomena, can ground other assumptions in the field. See teleology in Table 1 and goal-directed in Table 3.
	3. hypothetical end result that explains explicit deliberation, decision, and planning	Human organisms can explicitly aim for goals as individual agents or among a group in a collaborative context. See metacognition and theory of mind. To entertain
Interoception	the afferent signaling, central neural, and perceptual representation of the internal (physiological) state of the body	Interoception is among the internal processes in organism’s adaptivity. To enact relevance.
Language	designating and using symbols to communicate abstract meaning	Human organisms can associate labels with abstracted operations. To entertain abstraction, Conclusions.
Mental action	actions can be taken internally without interaction with the outside world	The organism uses mental actions to orchestrate operations. To execute operations.
Metacognition	1. reflective consciousness	Higher-order processing of oneself that is necessary for organisms to be able to subjectively report on their feelings but is not necessary for feeling itself. See subjective report. To entertain abstraction, Conclusions.
	2. reported confidence	A measurement of subjective report about how confident a participant is about their responses, which is used as a parameter of precision in understanding that participant’s algorithms. See metacognition: 3. Conclusions.
	3. parameter of precision	A parameter used in algorithm which reflects an evaluation of weighting of a lower-level parameter, e.g., sensation, valence. See sensation and valence. To entertain abstraction, Valence, Conclusions.
Mood	a type of affective experience	An affective experience reflecting the direction or momentum of positive or negative outcomes in the environment. Trajectory concerns.
Motivation	an aspect of being actionably oriented toward the world	The entire Human Affectome is motivational. Not among Affective Features.
Qualia	quality, or ‘what it’s like’, of conscious experience	Affective experiences have qualities that mark them—Affective Features. To enact relevance.
Reward	inherent relevance of an object, learned with experience	See reinforcement learning in Table 3.
Self	1. perspective from which conscious experience is organized	All affective phenomena are organized from the perspective of a self. To enact relevance.
	2. metacognitive reflection of self as an object	Human organism can reflect abstractly upon itself. See metacognition: 1. To entertain abstraction.
Sensation	a type of affective experience	An affective experience grounded in algorithms reflecting physiological concerns.
Stress	a type of affective experience	Acute or chronic state of intense affective experience which can lead to allostatic load if persistent. To execute operations.
Subjective report (self-report)	behavioral operationalization	Verbalized account of one’s feelings, which requires reflective, higher-order metacognition; an empirical measurement used to gain insight into the systematicity of feeling, but not required for feeling itself. See metacognition. Conclusions.
Theory of mind	the capacity to infer the mental state of others	Human organisms can project their adaptive perspective to others in order to cooperate or to abstract about non-agentive objects. See intentionality: intentional stance in Table 3. To entertain abstraction.
Umwelten	the way the world appears to an organism based on its adaptive capacities	The world appears to the human organism in a manner based on their adaptive capacities. To enact relevance.
Valence	an aspect of affective experience	The metric of how good or bad something is evaluated with relation to affective concerns indicating how suited the human organism is; reflected in the aspect of pleasure or displeasure of an affective experience; measured as low to high positive or negative fit. Affective Feature: Valence.
Wellbeing	1. life satisfaction	An affective experience reflecting the optimal match between the organism’s adaptive capabilities and the environment’s demands. Optimization concerns.
	2. mood	See mood. Trajectory concerns.
	3. momentary affective state	See valence. Valence, Optimization.