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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.

Some creatures are pretty obviously deciders, others obviously not; and there are indeterminate cases. This chapter considers some examples that are in various ways not straightforward. Discussing them helps to clarify the key notions involved in the basic package, especially those of ‘decision making’, ‘control’, and the ‘integration’ of basic-package capacities; and to sharpen the contrasts between deciders and other behaving systems. It also prepares the ground for the conclusion that the idea of the basic package raises no serious philosophical problems. Examples discussed include protozoa; bees; the human embryo, foetus, and neonate; the artificial giant; some machines described by Block; and the ‘machine-table robot’.

Considering humbler creatures than ourselves provides a better chance of uncovering what really matters for perceptual consciousness. This chapter discusses a series of broad classes of behaving systems, starting with ‘pure reflex systems’ and ending with ‘deciders’: systems with the ‘basic package’, capable of choosing between alternative courses of action, if only in a rudimentary sense. The idea of the basic package provides a framework for thinking about behaving systems, which advances the overall project of understanding perceptual consciousness. This framework helps to bridge the gap between descriptions in purely physical or biomechanical terms, and descriptions in psychological terms.

If the basic package (equivalently, being a decider) requires not only the capacity to acquire and use information, but to do so in a sense which involves the ability to represent the world and to have concepts, then it may seem hard to understand how anything but language-users could have the basic package. In that case, either perceptual consciousness does not require the basic package, or else only creatures with language can be perceptually conscious. It is argued that both alternatives should be rejected. There are no good reasons to adopt sufficiently strong assumptions about the relations between information, belief, concepts, and language. Discussions of the contrary views of Evans, Davidson, and others reinforce these points. The relevance of the notion of ‘non-conceptual content’ is also considered.

The basic package is necessary for perceptual consciousness but seems not to be sufficient. What is also necessary is ‘direct activity’: a special feature of the way events constituting incoming perceptual information affect the system, explained partly with the help of the ‘rabbitoid’. This imagined creature is a decider, but is unlike a normal rabbit in that its perceptual information does not automatically give it the opportunity to modify its current goals if doing so would help it. Direct activity is further explained in terms of ‘instantaneity’ and ‘priority’. It is an integrated process, to be conceived of holistically, and contrasts sharply with what is often called the ‘availability’ or ‘poisedness’ of perceptual information.