Valence Under Temporal Constraint: An Umwelt-Based Method for Predicting Felt Experience

Affective approaches place felt experience at the foundation of consciousness. This paper addresses two related problems: why would evolution select for felt evaluation and how can its presence in an organism be detected? It proposes that analysing the role time plays in an organism's response to its environment holds the key to both.

 

One of the mechanisms that arises through natural selection to respond to recurrent urgent ecological situations is neural specialisation. Limited pathways connect the relevant subset of sensory input to situation-specific responses with exceptional speed. This adaptation reaches its limit when information outside the predetermined mapping changes which response has the greatest biological value. This requires broader processing that results in a slower response that may be initiated only after the opportunity for effective action has passed.

 

This paper claims that the model-selection problem arising from ambiguous sensory input that was identified by Solms is located in this gap. The organism must give one interpretation priority before the available evidence has resolved which model of reality is most likely to be correct. Valence is understood as the felt assessment of whether an unresolved situation is improving or worsening the organism’s capacity to meet its biological needs. It gives a provisional model enough priority to guide action while processing continues. The proposed empirical condition is $(T_V<T_E<T_R)$: an observed early response begins while there is still time for an effective response, while a response based on sufficiently complete processing would begin only afterwards. When mapped specialised pathways cannot explain that response, the framework predicts that it is guided by valenced model selection. This inequality identifies the proposed evolutionary boundary at which elementary felt experience first acquires selective value when specialised solutions are insufficient.

 

Because these temporal relations arise within an organism’s Umwelt, the temporal factors are linked to a particular organism–task relation rather than the species in general. Valence may first emerge in specific behavioural domains and differ across populations or lineages occupying different niches.

 

The framework proposes a method for predicting whether a given organism possesses valence and therefore, under the affective premise, elementary felt experience. It begins by identifying a recurrent ecological problem, maps the limits of specialised mappings, and tests the resulting temporal prediction. Purpose-designed experiments can test the proposed relationships by manipulating ecological deadlines, processing demands and specialised coverage within the same organism–task relation. The result is not another general marker of consciousness, but a structured research programme for predicting when and where felt valence may emerge.