Krylatova Irina
Contemporary scientific and technological process leads to rethinking of human nature and its components including dignified treatment. Identification of the permissible treatment in genomic experiments draws the core discussion about the essence of human dignity. In this regard the article focuses on deep transformation of human dignity nature in terms of new biotechnological challenges and rapid development of genomic technologies. The author analyses main philosophical and legal conceptions of human dignity and concludes about guiding and interdisciplinary role of human dignity in the human rights system and policy. The research goes on to define the somatic rights within the category of human rights and shows new aspects of exercises the somatic rights arisen in increased use of genomic technologies. Author compares philosophical doctrine of inherent generic dignity of every human being and personality theory in legal acts. The article pays special attention on the analyses of recent genomic achievements and genomic manipulation for the last 5 years where the subjects of manipulation are ambryos and their tissues. Further, the article deals with philosophical, legal and medical justification of viability and sensitivity of human embryos and fetuses. The author considered the necessity of establishment the concept of moral status of embryo during genomic and genetic manipulations.
Keywords: genomic technologies, human dignity, somatic human rights, moral status of embryo, biotechnologies, genetic editing, genomic information.
Mochalov Artur
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Kolobaeva Natalia
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Nesmeyanova Svetlana
The article presents the authors' position on the right to access the Internet. According to the authors, this right can be considered as a human right. Nevertheless, this right is not fundamental; it can be derived from internationally recognized human rights and freedoms. Proving this thesis, the authors analyze the legal content of the right as well as the legal mechanism of its enjoyment by individuals. The authors come to the conclusion that all legal possibilities covered by the right to access the Internet are guaranteed by the existing fundamental rights. According to the authors, the right to access the Internet has a multi-component legal mechanism of enjoyment involving the elements of mechanisms provided by other human rights and freedoms. In this regard, the system of guarantees of this right includes both negative guarantees (aimed at ensuring personal freedom, autonomy of individuals and non-interference in their private life), and positive ones (requiring the states’ active actions to create conditions for providing equal opportunities for getting access to the global computer network without discrimination and at a reasonable price). The authors argue that exercising the right to access the Internet by individuals lead to the result that does not repeat the results of enjoyment of other rights and freedoms. This result is not a mere expansion of the tools for searching, receiving and disseminating information. It consists in involving an individual to the global information society, which opens up wide opportunities for enjoying many other rights and freedoms, at a qualitatively new level. The article also provides an analysis of the main international documents in the field of providing access to the Internet and regulating this issue at the national level. Based on a comparative legal study of the regulation of Internet access in various countries, the authors come to the conclusion that at present it is impossible to formulate a uniform approach to determining the content of the right and the mechanisms for its enjoyment, which would be sufficiently universal and would be satisfactory from the point of view of both international law and national legal systems. In this, the authors of the article see the need for further doctrinal development of the right to access the Internet and elaboration of international standards in this field.
Keywords: Internet, access to the Internet, the right to access the Internet, human rights, subjective rights, the global information society, the right to information, freedom of expression, human rights guarantees.
Davydov Dmitry
In the article, post-capitalism is viewed not as a prospect of a progressive movement towards a brighter future, but as archaization – the establishment of social relations reminiscent of pre-capitalist ones. Concepts are considered, the authors of which point to the corresponding tendencies: parcelling of sovereignty, merging of economic and political power, blocking the paths of upward mobility, class and caste character of social stratification, and much more. The article substantiates that the reasons for these trends should be sought not only in neoliberalism. The author puts forward the thesis that some of the phenomena associated with modernist progress (increasing the share of the middle class in society, accelerating social mobility, etc.) were a historical exception because, thanks to the industrial revolution, the broad masses of workers acquired a significant “negotiation” advantage in the form of a well-sold labour force involved in material production. This advantage disappears as production becomes more automated and the creative economy grows. Creative “labour” is much more difficult to sell due to the unpredictability of the creative process itself. Economic elites, in turn, rarely invest directly in “human capital”, preferring to look for talents and “appropriate” them, rather than develop them on a massive scale. This leads to the corresponding transformations of the social structure. Nevertheless, the article argues that the terms referring to the past (neo-feudalism, etc.) are unlikely to be suitable for a correct assessment of the current situation. We are in a different situation when the omnipotence of the “neo-feudal” can quite be countered by a perspective in which the universal and purposeful acceleration of scientific and technological progress is accompanied by a growing demand for maximizing the realization of everyone's talents.
Keywords: post-capitalism, neo-feudalism, communism, cognitive capitalism, creative economy, knowledge communism, rent, rental society, post-democracy.
Voscresensky Fedor
The article describes the functioning of the Judiciary as an element of the political system of modern Russia. The characteristics of the activities of the courts are manifested through the mechanism of judicial discretion, within the framework of which decisions on cases are made. There are two main models used to explain the behavior of judges: based on the law and on the basis of personal preference. In Russian conditions, the most adequate way to explain the behavior of judges on the basis of personal preferences is a strategic approach. According to it judges take into account existing institutional and political restrictions and are guided by the structure of political opportunities that is formed by these restrictions. The latter are due to the “Zone of Power”, the real function of which is to project onto the subject, the prescriptions formed by the current political regime, as well as the application of sanctions for their violation. Such a construction of the Russian political space gives the judicial system the place not of a full-fledged branch of power, but, in fact, of one of the executive state institutions that carry out the functions assigned to it within the framework of general policy. Its institutional characteristics are determined by the universal bureaucratic characteristics of the organization of activities and management, characteristic of the executive branch. Being in the “Zone of Power” significantly complicates the promotion of the concept of Public policy, since it levels the possibilities of horizontal cooperation, designed to be implemented by the principle of competition and equality of the parties. The article concluded that the Judicial system of modern Russia, represented by the acting judges, has abandoned the role of the builder of the field of law in the Public political space.
Key words: Judicial power, political system, public policy, judicial discretion, power zone.
Tourko Dmitry
The article discusses the problem of whether the self, or the subject, is real. There are several realist and anti-realist solutions to this problem. The author interprets all possible positions concerning this issue as conceptions of a certain relationship between the phenomenal self (our experience of ourselves as subjects) and the ontological self (the referent of our self-representations as it exists apart from our self-experience). In line with what is called phenomenal, or experiential minimalism, the author concludes that the experiential dimension of the self is sufficient for it to be real without qualification. Providing an argument against anti-realism, the author differentiates between strong and reductive realism and maintain that selves criticized by anti-realists like Metzinger are things of strong realism (substantial and causally autonomous entities), while in fact selves might turn out to be the things of reductive realism (things emergent on other things). The author suggests a solution to another problem of the ontology of the self, namely the problem of characterization (What is the self, specifically?). By endorsing minimalism, the self is characterized as the experiential faculty. According to the suggested version of minimalism, having experience is a necessary and sufficient condition to be a self or a subject. All other properties ascribed to subjects in philosophical literature (such as self-awareness, moral agency, second-order desires or the ability to create autobiographical narratives) are contingent. Properties like these are of course attributes of subjects, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for subjectivity. A subject who loses these properties does not cease to be a subject. On the contrary, a thing which has lost its experiential ability ceases to be a subject. In addition, there are non-human subjects who may lack all subjectivity-related features, except for the experiential faculty, and still be considered subjects. Phenomenal minimalism is a solution to the problem of the reality of selves. Subjects, or selves, are real as things with the experiential faculty. Finally, the author rejects pluralism (the idea that every subject is many things) and conventionalism (there is no non-contractual truth-apt proposition which serves as a solution to the characterization problem). Instead, essentialist realism is endorsed (the self, in a fundamental sense, is what is necessary for survival).
Keywords: self, subject, ontology, phenomenalism, minimalism, realism, anti-realism, experience, self-consciousness, philosophy of consciousness.
Ryabushkina Tatyana
The article is aimed at revealing the key features of epistemological paradigms, which change each other in the process of development of Western European thinking. The need for such a study is due to the fact that the distinction ‘classic – non-classic’, which is accepted in Russian philosophical literature, has a formal character. The non-classical paradigm is defined by indicating the absence of certain features of the classical (Cartesian) paradigm, such as, for example, fundamentalism, self-centrism, science-centrism, but not by finding the internal principle of each paradigm, on the basis of which its secondary features and the structure specificity of the conscious world of the corresponding epoch could be derived. In search of the basis for paradigm differences, the author turns to the analysis of the classical paradigm. As the analysis shows, it is determined by a change in understanding of the key epistemological opposition – the opposition of our knowledge of reality and reality itself. Тhe ancient and medieval opposition of the sensible and the supra-sensible is replaced by the opposition of subjective and the objective. Thus, the distinction between our knowledge of reality and reality itself is moved into the area of the conscious (sensible) world, which gives rise to the process of autonomization of this world from another world. This key feature allows us to outline the classic epistemology and answer a number of debatable questions, for example, the question of whether I. Kant and G.V.F. Hegel are the classical philosophers. As the subject-object relation becomes a key epistemological relation, the further paradigm shifts are determined by changes in understanding of the character of this relation and its role in cognition. The author of article shows that the non-classical paradigm, the formation of which begins in the works of A. Schopenhauer, brings with it a denial of the division of the conscious world into subjective and objective contents and the transformation of the relation ‘subject – object’ into the correlation ‘objectification – object’, which implies the exclusion of the subjective from the sphere of consciousness. The analysis allows us to conclude that, contrary to M. Heidegger, the age when the world becomes a picture is not the classical, but the non-classical epoch. It can be called the epoch of total objectivism, the reverse side of which is subjectivism. The next paradigmatic shift is prepared by the transformation of the world-picture into the world-text, in which the subject-object relation loses its structure-forming role in the conscious world. As the study shows, the change of the cognitive attitude that determines the structure of the conscious world is carried out through the assumption of a new distinction between the known and the unknown.
Keywords:classical theory of knowledge, non-classical theory of knowledge, the cognitive attitude, the conscious world, the sensible, the supra-sensible, the subjective, the objective, Rene Descartes, German idealism, subjectivism, objectivism, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein.