Where Is the Lust? Reproductive Affects at the Emergence of Experience
Abstract
Discussions of the adaptive origins of sentience focus on survival-related affects such as pain, hunger, and thirst. Yet reproduction is primary to fitness, and reproductive behavior often demands the same persistence and goal-directed flexibility that valenced experience is hypothesized to support. We ask whether a reproductive affect, the felt pull toward mating (here: lust), is as fundamental as pain in the evolution of sentience, providing a positive counterweight to competing homeostatic needs. We outline the rationale, comparative clues, and empirical approaches, and we argue that we may need to attend not only to those that hurt but to those that want.
Keywords: animal awareness, sentience, consciousness, pain, lust, motivation, trade-off