Abstract

Any system with the basic package is a decider; any decider with directly active perceptual information has the ‘basic package-plus’ and is a ‘decider-plus’. This chapter argues that being a decider-plus is logically sufficient for perceptual consciousness. First, on the provisional assumption that the basic package-plus includes all the purely functional conditions necessary for perceptual-phenomenal consciousness, the sole-pictures argument of Chapter 4 is extended to cover any decider-plus, not just zombies; then that assumption is defended. No merely natural or nomological or brute necessity has to be invoked. Among numerous likely objections discussed are those relating to blindsight; automatism; the usual objections to functionalist accounts of consciousness; the ‘explanatory gap’; and Carruthers’s critique of rival accounts to his own.