Figure 2.

Phenomenal content is conscious in the fly, yet comparable to unconscious content in humans. The figure depicts the richness or quality of phenomenal content (calculated as PHI in IIT) on the vertical axis. In both fly and man there is a nonlinear transition in this richness, marking the transition between unconscious to conscious processing, corresponding to the transition from feedforward to recurrent processing at the neural level. At the lower end, there is a second nonlinear transition, that between dead or alive. In both species, it therefore makes sense to talk about ‘conscious’ versus ‘unconscious’. However, the content of conscious processing in the fly is comparable to unconscious processing (e.g. deep sleep) in humans. (Online version in colour.)