Life Philosophies as Affect-Space Policies

Life Philosophies as Affect-Space Policies

Philosophical frameworks are meta-level policies over affect space—prescriptions for which regions to occupy and which to avoid.

Philosophical Affect Policy. A philosophical affect policy is a function $\phi: \mathcal{A} \to \R$ specifying the desirability of affect states, plus a strategy for achieving high-$\phi$ states.

Example (Stoicism). Historical context: Hellenistic period, cosmopolitan empires. Given exposure to diverse cultures and the instability of fortune, a philosophy emphasizing internal control was inevitable.

Affect policy:

Stoicism targets low arousal (equanimity) and low counterfactual weight (focus on what is within control).

Core techniques:

• Dichotomy of control: Reduce $\mathcal{CF}$ on uncontrollable outcomes
• Negative visualization: Controlled exposure to loss scenarios to reduce their arousal impact
• View from above: Zoom out to cosmic perspective, reducing $\mathcal{SM}$

Phenomenological result: Equanimity—stable low arousal with moderate integration, regardless of external circumstances.

Example (Buddhism (Theravada)). Historical context: Iron Age India, extreme asceticism proving ineffective. Given the persistence of suffering despite extreme practice, a middle path was inevitable.

Affect policy:

Target: very low self-model salience (anatt\=a), high integration (sam\=adhi), and reduced attachment to valence (equanimity toward pleasure and pain).

Core techniques:

• Sati (mindfulness): Observe arising/passing without identification
• Sam\=adhi (concentration): Build integration capacity through sustained attention
• Vipassan\=a (insight): See the constructed nature of self-model
• Mett\=a (loving-kindness): Expand self-model to include all beings

Phenomenological result: The jhanas (meditative absorptions) represent systematically mapped affect states—from high positive valence with low $\mathcal{SM}$ (first jhana) to pure equanimity beyond valence (fourth jhana and beyond).

Example (Existentialism). Historical context: Post-Nietzsche, post-WWI Europe. Given the death of God and collapse of traditional meaning structures, confrontation with groundlessness was inevitable.

Affect policy:

Existentialism embraces high counterfactual weight (awareness of radical freedom) and high effective rank (authentic engagement with possibilities). The strategy: confront anxiety rather than flee into “bad faith.”

Core concepts:

• Existence precedes essence: No fixed nature, radical freedom
• Radical freedom: High $\mathcal{CF}$—you could always choose otherwise
• Angst: The affect signature of confronting freedom
• Authenticity: Acting from genuine choice, not conformity
• Absurdity: The gap between human meaning-seeking and cosmic indifference

Phenomenological result: A distinctive acceptance of difficulty—not eliminating negative valence but refusing to flee into self-deception. High $\mathcal{CF}$ and high $\effrank$ with full awareness of their cost.

Authored versus inherited attractors. The basin geometry framework (Part II) distinguishes two kinds of stable affect configuration. An inherited attractor is one deepened by history without reflective endorsement — family dynamics, cultural defaults, social roles occupied long enough to consolidate. These can provide genuine stability; attractor depth is real regardless of source. But inherited attractors are fragile under regime change, because their depth came from conditions that may no longer hold. An authored attractor is one deepened through repeated traversal under one's own commitment: the person returned to this configuration because they endorsed it, building the basin in the process. Authored attractors generalize more robustly across life transitions because they were built by the agent's own gradient rather than borrowed from the surrounding environment. This provides a structural grounding for the eudaimonic/hedonic distinction in wellbeing research that has long resisted precise formulation. Hedonic wellbeing is attractor depth (the basin is deep, the experience is stable and positive). Eudaimonic wellbeing is authored attractor depth — the basin is deep because repeatedly chosen, not merely habituated to. The distinction lies in the source of depth, not its magnitude. A person can be deeply habituated to a comfortable unchosen life and still register something missing; another can be less settled in some respects while more genuinely at home, because the configurations they inhabit are ones they have built rather than inherited. The philosophical systems above can be read as competing proposals about which attractors are worth authoring and what traversal conditions produce genuine depth.

Each of these traditions also operates at a characteristic $\iota$ configuration, though none of them names it as such. Stoicism is a philosophy of moderate, fixed $\iota$: the Stoic neither dissolves into participatory merger with the world (that would violate equanimity) nor strips it of all meaning (that would undermine the Stoic’s commitment to living according to nature). The Stoic’s equanimity is the equanimity of a perceiver who has stabilized their $\iota$ at a setting where things matter moderately but cannot overwhelm. Buddhism is explicitly an $\iota$ flexibility training program. The progression through concentration (sam\=adhi) to insight (vipassan\=a) is the progression from stabilizing perception to modulating it voluntarily—the meditator learns to lower $\iota$ (nondual awareness, perception of dependent origination as alive and flowing) and to raise it (analytical discernment of dharmas as empty of inherent nature). The jhanas are waypoints on the $\iota$ descent: each absorption involves deeper participatory coupling with the object of meditation. Existentialism operates at a distinctively moderate-to-high $\iota$ that it refuses to either raise or lower further. The existentialist confronts a world stripped of inherent meaning (high $\iota$) but will not take the next step to mechanism (that would be bad faith—hiding from freedom behind determinism) nor retreat to low $\iota$ (that would be bad faith—hiding from freedom behind comforting illusions of purpose). The existentialist’s “authentic” stance is the deliberate maintenance of the $\iota$ setting at which freedom is visible and terrifying: meaning is not given, and you must not pretend otherwise.