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