Ideas and Ideals

The subject of the research in this article is epistemic paternalism, considered from the perspective of social epistemology. The research methodology uses methods of socio-philosophical cognition (systemic, functional, informational, etc.). The article substantiates the idea that, despite the variable assessments of epistemic paternalism, it has an objective basis for existence and in one form or another is reproduced in the processes of cognition, meaning the intervention of actors in the processes of cognition of individuals without their consent, but with the aim of bringing them benefi t. However, in many cases epistemic paternalism is diffi cult to distinguish from paternalism in general. A number of conditions must be fulfi lled to distinguish epistemic paternalism from general paternalism. But even in this case it is important: who implements such an intrusion, for what purpose and to what results it leads. The variant of epistemic libertarian paternalism seems preferable, although it could not avoid drawbacks. The question is: can the choice made by an individual in the process of cognition, based on given epistemic conditions, be considered truly free, and can he himself be considered an autonomous subject of cognition? This variant of paternalism largely corresponds to the concept of ‘nudging’, in which the creation of appropriate conditions ‘pushes’ the individual to a certain choice. At the same time, the following problems remain unresolved: who has the right to carry out this ‘nudge’, how to determine the true goals of such an intrusion and prevent malicious actions on the part of interventionists, etc.

The subject of this article is the phenomenon of the boundary between the private and public spheres. The research is based on a systematic approach that allows analyzing and combining individual aspects of the phenomenon under study, as well as methods of logical and historical analysis, hermeneutical and logical methods. The ratio of public and private spheres has now become the subject of consideration of a number of social sciences and humanities. If the public sphere is fundamentally transparent and open to everyone, then privacy, on the contrary, is connoted with darkness, opacity, mystery. A person as a social being is characterized by the need for both public and private space. The boundaries between public and private space can be both material (doors, walls) and immaterial (laws, traditions, social norms). It is noted that these boundaries are not static, they change in space and time, depend on culture, generation and social stratum. Socially constructed boundaries of privacy are formed on the basis of existing ideas in this society about the degree of personal inviolability. What a person is allowed to demonstrate and see is subject to public expectations. Different ideas about personal boundaries can lead to cross-cultural confl ict. It is argued that borders protect the right to privacy associated with tact, voluntary refusal to interfere in the personal affairs of another person. The observance of social distance constitutes personal freedom in both public and private space. Deprivation of privacy humiliates human dignity. Therefore, the right to private space, the ability to defend and protect personal boundaries is a necessary prerequisite for personal freedom and autonomy.

The article substantiates the distinction between social and sociality as two levels of social ontology. The concept of the invariant of sociality is introduced to denote the ability of a set of active agents of natural or artifi cial origin to form a stable homogeneous or heterogeneous unity by orienting each agent to the coordination and coordination of interactions. The analysis of the polemics between J. Habermas and K. Popper regarding the explanation of the mode of emergence of symbolic objects that are part of intersubjective life worlds allowed the author to clarify the peculiarities of interactions in digital communications. If the life world of an individual is constructed for him in the space of the technosystem, and is not a product of the cultural tradition of practices of a certain community, then the content of symbolic formations necessary for interactions with other individuals also arises in the information space organized and fi lled with the technosystem. The conditions of the possible transition of society to a post-social state are considered. According to the author, post-sociality emerges as a format of patterns of interactions between individuals in interactions with imaginary Others. These patterns are objectifi ed symbolic formations and are incorporated into the practices of interactions with the Other in three parallel spaces: a) in the space of direct interpersonal interactions, b) in the space of network interactions mediated by patterns of virtual origin, and c) in the space imposed by network platforms in the form of ‘digital twins’. These three spaces in the intersubjective life world are now being formed as regulators of the behavior of individuals not only in the interhuman, but also in the space of inseparable connection with the digital technosystem.

The article analyzes the problem of the relationship of two historical phenomena, which largely determined the appearance of an entire century and infl uenced the development of subsequent forms of culture. With the undoubted scientist orientation of positivism and Bonapartism in the middle and second half of the 19th century, the question of their kinship remains debatable. The author of the article opposes the hypothesis of the direct determining infl uence of positivism on Bonapartism. In order to substantiate this statement, the article considers the works of Louis Bonaparte, directly related to natural science topics. The work which was dedicated to sugar production in France essentially has political goals. Written by a political prisoner, it is directly polemical to government decisions made in France. Louis Bonaparte calls for focusing on the common interests of the country, taking into account the needs of producers, consumers and residents of the colonies of France. He gives a detailed description of the process of obtaining sugar from beets, mentions the introduced technical innovations. Political independence, in his opinion, requires the preservation and development of sugar production in the country. In his essay on the project for the construction of a canal connecting the Pacifi c Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean, he gives various considerations about the need for such an enterprise. In this work, Louis Bonaparte operates various geographical data, also seeks to show his acquaintance with hydraulics. He emphasizes the political importance of the project, as well as its commercial attractiveness. With positivism, the position of Louis Bonaparte brings together the idea of  progress, the call to rely in public life on science that has a practical application, criticism of speculative theories. He diverges from the ancestor of positivism in assessing the role of religion and republican institutions. Louis Bonaparte did not share the theory of the three stages of Comte and his encyclopedic law. Positivism and Bonapartism as special historical phenomena of one century have some related features, but do not fl ow from one another.

The article discusses one of the possible trajectories of global development leading to humane orders through the growth of authority and infl uence of international law and international courts. The well-known aggravation of confl ict in the fi rst decades of the current century has already led to polarization, the logical conclusion of which could be a new period of the Cold War. Two camps are being formed again, each of them including several centers. Variants of names are discussed and arguments in favor of choosing the pair ‘The World of Rules’ and ‘The World of Traditions’ are given. Humanistic development presupposes the prevention of wars, which is possible only if confl icts are resolved on the basis of law and the priority of judicial decisions, backed by the solidarity of the leading powers. The highest barrier to this is the commitment of the strongest states to maintain the fullest possible sovereignty in their foreign and domestic policies. Not only authoritarian regimes but also liberal democracies are not ready for any limitation of their sovereignty. A deep worldview gap in the attitude of politicians, experts, and societies to the future in terms of war and peace is revealed. The imperative to expand consciousness and language to overcome this gap, to include these centers in the legal world order, for the subsequent involvement of the global Limitrophe, i.e. a multitude of non-aligned states, is substantiated. It is shown that Immanuel Kant’s bold political ideas were only partially realized in the 20th century. Kant’s insights about the humanistic meaning of history through the achievement of ‘lawfulness’ primarily in interstate relations remain relevant and require their realization.

Since the 19th century, one of the main areas of dispute in the framework of social philosophy concerns the role of spiritual factors, psychology and culture in the development of society in general and in the formation of capitalism in particular. To overcome disagreements, it is necessary to understand what is the real role of spiritual factors (the spirit of capitalism) in the formation and functioning of the system of rational capitalism. The initial methodological premise of the study is that a multifactorial approach to historical explanation is required, in particular to explain the phenomenon of the emergence of capitalism. The emergence of rational capitalism is not so much a manifestation of the iron law of history as the result of a unique constellation of social factors. Most of these factors are of a material (in the sociological sense of the word) nature. Nevertheless, we can confi dently say that the formation of the spirit of capitalism was one of the necessary factors in the formation of a system of rational capitalism. The spirit of capitalism is a combination of culture, ideology and the prevailing psychological mood that motivate economic agents to act according to the principles of a market economy, to strive for enrichment, but not by any methods, but only those that contribute to the formation of a rational capitalist system, productive and capable of sustainable self-development. The spirit of capitalism does not exist initially and is not formed automatically by the capitalist system in the course of its functioning. In particular, its formation and maintenance require a certain ideological activity of the humanitarian intelligentsia.

In the context of recent international events, issues of national identity have once again appeared on the agenda, which for the fi rst time clearly sounded in the domestic humanitarian discourse since the middle of the XIX century. The events of the last ten years have clearly shown that Russia, having experienced multifactorial external infl uences, is not а part of the Western or Eastern cultural and geographical worlds, but has its own ‘civilizational face’ and its own tasks in world history. In order to rationalize and systematically comprehend the basic categories of national identity, it is necessary to turn to the analysis of such concepts as ‘Russian civilization’, ‘Eurasian civilization’, ‘Russian world’.

To avoid extremes and modern temptations in their assessment, the methodology of such study must be based primarily on the position of such Russian thinkers as N.A. Berdyaev, K.N. Leontiev, N.S. Trubetskoy. They rightly noted that autocratic Russian imperialism and cosmopolitanism are opposed to both true patriotism and genuine humanity.  The infringed in the past Russian national identity is subjected today to nationalist temptations and threats of ideological excesses, which is refl ected in the extremely broad interpretation of the concept of the ‘Russian world’. The article gives the author’s assessment of this concept, which is based on the ethnocultural understanding of the Russian world. The necessity of overcoming its identifi cation, on the one hand, with the Eurasian civilization or the Eurasian cultural and geographical world, and on the other hand, with the civilization of Russia, is substantiated.  In the spiritual aspect, the Russian world is devoid of geographical, political, ethnocultural and linguistic ties, refl ecting the primordial human right to freely acquire one’s spiritual identity. But such self-identifi cation should be purely voluntary, especially in a multinational Russia. The civilization of Russia, in addition to the Russian world (or Russian subcivilization), also includes the Turkic, Mongolian and Ugro-Finnish ethno-cultural worlds (subcivilizations) from the standpoint of classical Eurasianism.

In the context of recent international events, issues of national identity have once again appeared on the agenda, which for the fi rst time clearly sounded in the domestic humanitarian discourse since the middle of the XIX century. The events of the last ten years have clearly shown that Russia, having experienced multifactorial external infl uences, is not а part of the Western or Eastern cultural and geographical worlds, but has its own ‘civilizational face’ and its own tasks in world history. In order to rationalize and systematically comprehend the basic categories of national identity, it is necessary to turn to the analysis of such concepts as ‘Russian civilization’, ‘Eurasian civilization’, ‘Russian world’.

To avoid extremes and modern temptations in their assessment, the methodology of such study must be based primarily on the position of such Russian thinkers as N.A. Berdyaev, K.N. Leontiev, N.S. Trubetskoy. They rightly noted that autocratic Russian imperialism and cosmopolitanism are opposed to both true patriotism and genuine humanity.  The infringed in the past Russian national identity is subjected today to nationalist temptations and threats of ideological excesses, which is refl ected in the extremely broad interpretation of the concept of the ‘Russian world’. The article gives the author’s assessment of this concept, which is based on the ethnocultural understanding of the Russian world. The necessity of overcoming its identifi cation, on the one hand, with the Eurasian civilization or the Eurasian cultural and geographical world, and on the other hand, with the civilization of Russia, is substantiated.  In the spiritual aspect, the Russian world is devoid of geographical, political, ethnocultural and linguistic ties, refl ecting the primordial human right to freely acquire one’s spiritual identity. But such self-identifi cation should be purely voluntary, especially in a multinational Russia. The civilization of Russia, in addition to the Russian world (or Russian subcivilization), also includes the Turkic, Mongolian and Ugro-Finnish ethno-cultural worlds (subcivilizations) from the standpoint of classical Eurasianism.

The article examines the origin of the concepts of ‘politarism’ and its derivatives ‘political mode of production’, ‘political society’, which are quite often used in the Russian domestic socio-historical and socio-philosophical literature. It is shown that the immediate predecessor of this concept was the ‘Asian mode of production’ and its various analogues (‘Eastern despotism’, ‘the era of Asian kings’ etc.) in the works of K. Marx, which remained mainly in manuscript form. The fi rst discussion around the Asian mode of production (AMP), which unfolded in the USSR in the 1920s, although it was suppressed by harsh administrative methods, nevertheless brought a signifi cant revival to the Soviet social philosophy, which was already under the powerful pressure of the dogmas of the ‘historical materialism’ and the so-called fi ve-term scheme of socio-economic formations. A second similar discussion, which took place in the 1950s and 1960s, also played such a role, prompting, among other things, a signifi cant part of professional orientalists to large-scale and conceptual socio-historical generalizations. The activities and works of the recently deceased professor Yu. I. Semenov, whose name is directly related to the appearance of the term ‘politarism’ in Soviet and then Russian social philosophy, are specially considered. Y.I. Semenov’s original historiosophical concept, created and developed by its author in the conditions of his conscious opposition to the aggressive ideological environment and administrative dictate, has become a valuable component of the conceptual and scientifi c understanding of the historical process, retaining its heuristic signifi cance to this day. The concepts used by Y.I. Semenov and, in general, his very approach to understanding social and political reality deserve attention as one of the versions of non-dogmatic, creative Marxism, which occupies a noticeable niche in modern domestic and foreign academic discourse.

Here we discuss in more detail the implications of such outcomes, and what are the possible ways that our worldviews can be modifi ed to account for the experimental facts. As we will see, the standard mechanistic picture of the universe is no longer a viable option, and it will never be again. Nowadays, we know this with certainty unusual for physics, that only a strict mathematical theorem could provide. We hope, that the 2022 Nobel Prizes in Physics will help to draw attention to the scientifi c and philosophical revolution that took place almost half a century ago (with the fi rst Bell tests), and that the clock-like picture of reality will soon be widely recognized for what it is – the “fl at Earth” of the philosophy of science.

The topic of active implementation of AI technologies in modern educational reality is one of the most popular in modern scientifi c discourse. This article is aimed at fi xing the points of view of domestic and foreign research community regarding the possibilities of applying artifi cial intelligence (AI) technologies in the educational sphere. The discussion is centered not so much on the diversity of approaches, topics, and strategies as on a semi-systematic (descriptive) literature review aimed at identifying the most signifi cant research traditions for the topic under consideration. The latter include specifi c applications of AI technologies, the context of technology use related to the recently concluded COVID-19 pandemic, AI as a tool for learners’ adaptation in the educational process, as well as the analysis of opportunities, limitations, positive expectations and threats to the active implementation of AI technologies in education. Both the diversity of research positions and their ambiguity are recorded. It becomes obvious that despite the large number of publications devoted to the application of AI technologies in the educational process, a number of aspects remain unclear, including the understanding of what is the phe-nomenon of modern education in the context of the AI technologies application and how it is transformed under the infl uence of such technologies. The need for further understanding of the role and place of AI technologies in modern social practices within the educational process is emphasized.

The article is devoted to the assessment of the relevance of conducted scientifi c research using the indicators proposed by the author and their characterisation based on assigning appropriate weighting coeffi cients to each indicator. Terms and their new defi nitions characterising the relevance of the conducted research are proposed, while their essence and content are disclosed.

The object of the study is the result of research work (regardless of the subject area and research focus), the subject is the relevance of the obtained research results.

The research methodology is based on the method of analyzing the existing approaches to assessing the relevance of research results, as well as the experience of practical activities of the organisation in reviewing the results of research and development work.

In the course of the conducted research it was found that the issues of relevance of the results of research work are given much less importance than the relevance of the topic, purpose and objectives of research at the stage of development of tactical and technical (technical) task of research work. At the same time, in the course of reviewing the results of completed R&D work, the reviewer lacks methodological approaches to their adequate assessment.

According to the results of the conducted research, the criteria and conditions are defi ned, when fulfi lled, it is considered appropriate to recognise the results of the conducted research as relevant. Practical recommendations on the use of the obtained research results as a basis for the methodology of assessing the relevance of the obtained results of research and development work are given.

The participants of the round table discussed the problems of transformation of the information space and the place of the human being in this process. This includes the issues of introducing artifi cial intelligence in the learning process, and the nature of human changes in the new conditions dictated by the need to respond to the relevant challenges of ever-changing technologies. The question of the changing relationship between knowledge and information in connection with the habit of using smartphones, when there is a serious degradation of the value of knowledge. Also we observe a paradigm shift in the education system and the need to respond to it as adequately as possible. The problem of adapting to fundamentally changing communication technologies that change social relations and ways of identifi cation and even self-identifi cation. The question arises about the suffi ciency of the level of human adaptability in relations with the environment formed by these technologies and  more broadly – about the validity of the ideas of transhumanism. The phenomenon of imitation of thinking is discussed, when the tasks requiring solution are reduced to the process of ‘stimulus – reaction’, as well as the problem of creativity control by bureaucratic structures in the conditions of changes in the relations between scientifi c and technological progress and social progress.