Emotion Vectors and Constrained Transport: A Possible Bridge from Claude's Interpretability to Bounded Interiority

Summary A short theoretical bridge note connecting Anthropic's recent interpretability findings on emotion vectors in Claude Sonnet 4.5 to the Computation as Constrained Transport and Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis frameworks. The note argues that Anthropic's emotion vectors — local, causally active, behavior-shaping control features — are functionally consistent with the view that emotions are compressed, load-bearing reorganizations of salience and action-readiness that emerge when neutral global reconstruction is too costly. The bridge is characterized as functional rather than ontological: transformer systems may approximate the control logic of emotional computation without possessing the metabolically bounded interior that, on the biological account, makes such reorganizations lived rather than merely executed. A key open question identified is whether post-training shifts in emotion vector recruitment represent genuine reflective governance or a more superficial suppression of high-intensity states. The Anthropic interpretability research referenced in this note can be found at: Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model. https://www.anthropic.com/research/emotion-concepts-function Related Works: Pender, M. A. (2026). Emotions as Computation Under Constrained Transport. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19600710 Pender, M. A. (2026). Computation as Constrained Transport: A Geometric Perspective on Information Processing. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19410259 CAH Framework: Pender, M. A. (2026). The Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis: Dynamic Information Geometry as a Regulated Resource in Neural Computation. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19634691