mind. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. [ Links ] SHANNON, C.E. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell Systems Technical Journal, v.27, p.379-423, 1948. [ Links ] TYNDALL, J. Fragments of science: a series of detached essays, addresses and reviews. London, Longman, 1879. [ Links ] WILKES, K.V. Yishi, duh, um and consciousness. In: MARCEL, A.J.; BISIACH, E., eds. Consciousness in contemporary science. Oxford, Oxford University Press / Clarendon Press, 1988. p.16-41. [ Links ] 1 Este e o chamado "problema da geracao", aparentemente formulado pela primeira vez por John Tyndall que afirmava que "The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other." (citado por James, 1890, p.147). O mesmo ponto de vista parece ser sustentado por alguns filosofos contemporaneos, como, por exemplo, McGinn (1989), que argumenta que este e um problema excessivamente complexo para nossas mentes, na medida em que a experiencia consciente esta fora do escopo de qualquer teoria cientifica. 2 Num artigo publicado em 1980 H. J. Morowitz observava que "first, the human mind, including consciousness and reflective thought, can be explained by activities of the central nervous system, which, in turn, can be reduced to the biological structure and function of that physiological system. Second, biological phenomena at all levels can be totally understood in terms of atomic physics, that is, through the action and interaction of the component atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so forth. Third and last, atomic physics, which is now understood most fully by means of quantum mechanics, must be formulated with the mind as a primitive component of the system." (p.39). 3 "that is, that all the microphysical facts in the world do not entail the facts about consciousness." (Chalmers, 1996, p.93). 4 Um experimento mental, figura frequentemente utilizada na literatura da filosofia da mente, consiste em imaginar uma situacao hipotetica, algo que teoreticamente pode vir a ser realizado mas que nao contraria possibilidades fisicas e logicas. A importancia dos experimentos mentais consiste no fato de que destas situacoes hipoteticas podemos extrair imediatamente consequencias conceituais importantes. 5 Cog e o nome de um robot cujo projeto esta atualmente sendo desenvolvido no laboratorio de inteligencia artificial do MIT. A ideia e construir um robot humanoide, uma maquina geral que possa fazer tudo o que um ser humano faz. 6 Veja-se por exemplo, a passagem onde Chalmers afirma: "... consciousness is a surprising feature of the universe. Our grounds for belief in consciousness derive solely from our own experience of it. Even if we knew every last detail about the physics of the universe - the configuration, causation and evolution among all the fields and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold - that information would not lead us to postulate the existence of conscious experience. My knowledge of consciousness, in the first instance, comes