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

Abstract

Consciousness research faces two connected problems: why should felt evaluation emerge through natural selection, and how can its presence in other organisms be detected? This paper proposes that analysing the role time plays in an organism's response to its environment holds the key to both. When recurrent ecological situations demand rapid responses, selection can favour specialisation. Restricted pathways connect selected sensory input to prepared responses with exceptional speed. This adaptation reaches its limit when information outside the prepared mapping can change which response has the greatest biological value. Broader processing is then required, but it may identify and initiate the appropriate response only after the opportunity for effective action has passed. This paper claims that the model-selection problem identified by Solms is located in this gap. The organism must give one interpretation priority before the available evidence has resolved which interpretation 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 signature is T_V