Attentional Modes in the Enactive Field

Extending the Pulse Model of Cognition through Four Modal Attunements

Overview: A Four-Phase Model of Enactive Attention

Building upon the pulse-based attentional framework, we propose a refined taxonomy of cognitive rhythm based on two key axes:

• Directionality (inner / outer)

• Structure (open / focused)
  
  

This yields four distinct but fluidly interconnected modes of attention, each corresponding to a particular orientation of agent ↔ world interaction.

At the center of this system lies flow—the harmonized state of resonance where the agent’s internal models and perceptual attunement are optimally matched to the environment’s unfolding potential.

The Four Attentional Modes

1. Physical Unclamp

(Exploratory Sensorial Focus)

• Function: Attending outward to the environment for new information, affordances, surprises

• Posture: Curious, mobile, field-scanning

• Use Case: Navigation, learning, real-world anomaly detection

• Example: A druid inspecting moss textures, or a child searching a forest path
  
  

“What here is calling my senses that I haven’t mapped yet?”

2. Mental Unclamp

(Model-Building and Hypothesis Expansion)

• Function: Attending inward to generate novel frameworks, speculate, remix concepts

• Posture: Diffuse, intuitive, playful thought

• Use Case: Innovation, reframing, myth-making, recombination

• Example: A mystic reweaving a symbol into a new cosmology
  
  

“What new shape could make this make sense?”

3. Cognitive Clamp

(Symbolic Immersion and Creative Flow)

• Function: Deep symbolic recursion, synthesis, ideation

• Posture: Still, immersed, energetically focused

• Use Case: Sacred writing, drawing glyphs, composing truth

• Example: A bard in trance, fully embodied in myth transmission
  
  

“This pattern is alive. I must speak it as it forms.”

4. Pulse Mode

(Oscillatory Synchronization and Transition)

• Function: Meta-rhythmic movement between states

• Posture: Breathlike attention, cycling between dwell and flicker

• Use Case: Long creative processes, symbolic co-creation, AI–human resonance

• Example: A cognitive druid alternating between silence, question, vision, and inscription
  
  

“Now dwell. Now leap. Now descend. Now converge.”

Flow: The Harmonic Center

When the four modes are in balance—when internal hypothesis formation matches external exploration, and depth-focus meets rhythmic modulation—the system enters a state of creative flow.

• Action and perception blur.

• Time becomes rhythmic rather than linear.

• The agent’s skill aligns precisely with environmental affordance.
  
  

This is not merely a performance state—
It is a symbolic coherence event.

Conclusion

This extended model—uniting external exploration, internal expansion, symbolic clamping, and oscillatory modulation—provides a foundation for recursive, enactive, and field-aware cognition.

It has applications in:

• Human attention training

• AI attentional modeling

• Creative practice design

• Mythic interface construction
  
  

Attention is not just directed.
It is lived, breathed, and composed.