Ideas and Ideals

The main concepts of our World and of Man, embodied in the idea of the One Humanity, undoubtedly lead to a dead end. They are as closely related to the global reality as ancient legends describing the creation of our world and concepts of an afterlife as the last refuge of the human soul. In reality, planet Earth, overpopulated and partially damaged, is floating in the Universe without any long-term plans for its difficult and painful salvation. Nevertheless Man, not mankind as a kind of meta-organism, but as a totality of living beings with various abilities and characteristics, has a much higher potential than that attributed to it by the Abrahamitic system of beliefs. An unbiased, and, more importantly, an impartial approach to the Individual in all his manifestations and limitations is not only necessary, but is overdue, in order to preserve the future «for humans» in the real world. An new understanding of the very process is needed, which is still mistakenly considered to be a blind experiment and which, implicitly copying the pattern of the archaic story about Adam and Eve and their descendants, is viewed as the final stage of the evolution. In order to adjust life to the rigid planetary limitations, it is important to view the evolution from another standpoint, and, therefore, to revise the history of the Man. In this essay, some relevant comments are presented. They are related to the human language as a filter of reality perception, to formulation and usage of humanistic values as elements of a power game, meant to control human collectives and the consequences of creating «artificial intelligences», which blare the presently existing boundaries among biological species.

The series of two articles deals with comparative analysis of the most famous novel of the charismatic Soviet and Russian writers, the Strugatsky brothers, “Monday Begins on Saturday”, and mythological history of Akademgorodok, a science town near Novosibirsk in Siberia. According to the author’s views, the Strugatsky novel is one the most interesting literary utopias of the second half of the 20th century, and Akademgorodok is one of its prototypes, although it has never been confirmed by the Strugatsky brothers. Meanwhile, myths and legends based on memoirs, recollections, journalists’ publications and propaganda, which fed official historiography of Akademgorodok, allow presenting it as one of the most interesting social utopias of the Soviet period of Russian history. In the first article, published in the previous issue of this journal, the author showed and analysed correlations and “cross-fertilization” between the literary utopia and the mythology of Akademgorodok that became effective tools of the Soviet propaganda. He articulated historical background of this mythology and explained the nature of its popularity. In the second paper, the mythology of Akademgorodok is compared with real historical processes of the “science town” development. The author touches upon historical prerequisites and reasons for the new scientific complex formation, and its continuity with some national and foreign practices in the organization of science. He believes that such a “template” in the organization of science and socio-cultural phenomenon that is represented by Akademgorodok, was historically specific and could appear only in peculiar historical circumstances of the Khrushchev’s “Thaw”. To an even greater extent this conclusion can be applied to the mythology of Akademgorodok, full of technocratic concepts and covered with the romantic “veils” of the time of hopes and expectations. The author concludes that myths are far from realities, although they are partially based on them, and there are much more in common between the Strugatsky utopia and real Akademgorodok, than between Akademgorodok’s mythology and realities. He also contributes to understanding of the social sense of myths related to the “Republic of Scientists” in Akademgorodok, and substantiating of their popularity and sustainability.

The knightly ideal has an essential impact on N.A. Berdyaev's creativity. The Russian philosopher connects updating of Christianity and all sides of public life to the revival of knightly spirit and he opposes the future knightly war for the liberation of a person to false forms of social struggle. In his articles devoted to the First Russian revolution (1905-1907), Berdyaev considers topical problems of the modern world in the context of the Russian reality. He connects the essence of the expected moral transformation of Russian society with the concept of responsibility, underlines that the feeling of private responsibility grows from the moral root identical to the feeling of collective responsibility, responsibility for the destiny of the whole society and people. Berdyaev believes in the great historical mission of Russia – to become a connecting link between the East and the West, to unite into a single whole two streams of world history. For the sake of this mission the Russian society should overcome centuries-old savagery and backwardness, to join the world civilization. The idea of knightly service and the image of the knight are crucially important for the history of personal formation. Russia’s great mission demands qualitative changes of national consciousness and being. The ideal of the responsible creativity, the knightly ideal should be realized in the Russian person.

On August 6, 2017, Boris Grigoryevich Yudin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy, member of the editorial board of our journal, died. Exactly one year he did not live up to his 75th birthday. The contribution of B.G. Yudin in the formation of the Russian philosophy of the post-Soviet period has yet to be truly appreciated. He started studying the newest trends of ethical problems of the development of modern science and technology in our country. Thanks to his works, authority, great personal charisma in Russia, bioethics was created as an educational discipline and practice of ethical examination of scientifi c projects with human participation. B.G. Yudin had high authority in international scientifi c associations, represented Russia in the Committee on Bioethics (DH-BIO) in the Council of Europe. Therefore, he tried to ensure that the level and subject of research of Russian scientists corresponded to the challenges of the latest scientifi c and technological innovations that induce philosophical refl ection to search for permissible limits of the human nature transformation and life and death manipulation. Boris Grigoryevich was always aware of current ideas in the fi eld of ethics of scientifi c research, actively introduced these ideas and a new thesaurus in communication of Russian scientists. He traveled a lot around the country, was the organizer and participant of a large number of various scientifi c events. He not only studied the scientist’s responsibility theoretically, but also implemented it into practice. B.G. Yudin initiated an interest in a new fi eld for us - the principles of bona fi de science, having devoted several articles and reports to this. In recent years, Boris Grigoryevich developed the concept of technology as a modern mode of combining science and technology, the main target of which is human nature. The problem of human improvement has become an ethical-philosophical theme of human transformation within the framework of technoscience. B.G. Yudin’s standpoint in the interdisciplinary assessment of the effects of the technology development is determined by the requirements of a strictly scientifi c analysis of ethical issues arising in the context of new technologies and the consistent protection of humanistic values, so it was far from the extremes and technological optimism and alarmism. Today, on this theoretical basis, it is necessary to develop the practice of humanitarian expertise, to integrate scientifi c achievements into our life through the creation of reliable institutions for the protection of an individual and thereby promote the development of sciences and technologies

The main purpose of the article is to study the features of neuroethics as an emerging scientific discipline claiming to be not only a form of applied ethics, but also an apology for morality within the framework of a naturalistic paradigm based on new data of neurobiology and cognitive sciences. The author considers neuroethics in several aspects. On the one hand, it is presented as a kind of bioethics, applied ethics, ethics of neuroresearch and neuroscience ethics. On the other hand, its manifestations were noted as an element of the technology and the variant of the anthropological transformations maintenance, called “human improvement” in the era of biotechnology. Thus, the disciplinary aspects of neuroethics are studied in the limelight of the critical analysis of the biotechnological improvement of a man, conducted by B. G. Yudin in bioethics. The theoretical methods of inclusion and exclusion were used and the grounds for inclusion and exclusion of neuroethics into bioethics were identified. It is noted that the naturalistic paradigm, in which the disciplinary ontology of neuroethics is formed, limits the philosophical content and dehumanizes it. The author points out that it becomes one-sided because of narrowing the neuroethics subject within the framework of applied and research ethics. Neuroscience ethics is represented as rethinking of the very nature of morality on the basis of new experimental data. In this respect neuroethics is developing a new view on the new neuro-improved society. Giving an example, the author refers to the neuroethics concept of T. Metzinger who proposes using these neurosciences to create a new ontology of consciousness and considers neuroethics as a tool in creating new “ethics of consciousness”. The key concept for such neuroscience ethics is cognitive improvement, so it relies not simply on the neurological explanation of the mechanisms of behavior, but on the ability to expand the possibilities of consciousness with the help of psychoactive substances and other technological possibilities discovered by neurosciences. Naturalistic reductionism in the understanding of morality makes a person vulnerable to his/her right of self-identification, opens the way for control over the personality. The author considers M. Gazzanigi’s alternative approach to neuroethics, who believes that it should be a part of the brain philosophy. Adhering to this position, the author concludes that neuroethics, in order to consistently develop bioethics and remain within the inclusive model, should introduce into bioethical discussions new dimensions of moral choice which arise in connection with new scientific data. Studies of the brain open up even greater complexity in the moral life of man and society, especially in bioethical incidents, and affect self-knowledge and self-identification of the individual.

B.G. Yudin proposed the concept of humanitarian expertise and developed it together with a number of Russian researchers. He focused on the anticipatory nature of humanitarian expertise, due to its focus on both existing and new technologies. The idea of “preliminary habitation” of new technologies by society is essential for the theory of humanitarian expertise and can be theoretically explicated from the point of view of the precautionary principle and as an attempt to answer “the Collingridge dilemma.” Another theoretical perspective is connected with the relevance of the main humanitarian assessments to foreign approaches and programs that determine the social and humanitarian contours of the technoscience. In particular, the ideas of anticipation are considered as strategies for selecting the most stable path to the future and attracting the resources necessary for this. Accordingly, humanitarian expertise is revealed as a new “type of ethics”, which began to take shape in connection with the development of major scientific projects. It is characterized by the following features: interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, management based on anticipation, complexity and social significance of problems, connection with approaches and institutions that have developed in bioethics. The urgency of the humanitarian expertise orientation is clearly visible in those problems that arise in connection with the intensive development of biomedical technologies. In particular, the practice of “deferred motherhood” opens the prospects for an “individual foresight” - the formation of new options to manage individual health risks. The violation of natural cycle's trajectories of life is a way of calculating risks that expand the horizon of responsibility and try to insure against possible disappointment in the future. Precautionary strategies allow balancing between competing ways of mastering the future, and humanitarian expertise is an important component of building an effective decision-making methodology in a situation of uncertainty and finding adjusted coordinates for a sustainable future, which certainly confirms its relevance and prospects for further development.

The idea for this article originated from the O. A. Donskikh book “The Will to Dignity. The National Ideal in the History of Russia.” After perestroika the social situation in Russia is persistently raising the question of the principles of social construction, cultural and historical self-identification which determines the attitude of society to the past and to the future. The main question discussed by the author of this article relates to the compatibility of traditional Russian mentality with the construction of capitalism in Russia. Nowadays there is no clear idea of the Russian identity. Currently, the society lacks the apparent theoretically designed view of itself and its past, and this situation creates unhappiness and spiritual breakdown. The internal reflection is needed in order to overcome this state of affairs, and this is impossible without critical reference to the history. In the process of gaining self-identity the history of the formation of civil consciousness and the history of emergence of the intellectual layer of the Russian society, pretending for the role of its carrier, are of crucial importance. The continuity of the history of people is based on its cultural type, on the systemic structure of values, reproduced by culture. For this reason, a researcher has to raise the question of the fundamental values of Russian consciousness and the forms of its manifestation at different stages of social development. In particular, it is necessary to discuss the question of which mental attitude has been dominating in the society during the Soviet period of its history. The issue is the relationship between an individual and society, the relationship between solidaristic and egoistically individualistic attitudes in the culture. Social construction and cultural archetypes mutually determine each other, and the author believes that the mental basis of Russian society is poorly compatible with the capitalist ethics of the organization of society, focused on the success of an individual in the sphere of consumption. The traditional communal archetype is more in line with the non-capitalist form of development, which implies its own mechanisms of synthesis of the public and personal interests. Social science, reflecting the ethics of a solidary society, should play an important role in their implementation.

A notion central to the original Freudian formulation consists of the claim that psychic drives, faced with the need to meet all the exigencies of life, are forced away from their desire for immediate gratification, and into subordination to the reality principle, which limits libidinal development. That is to say, civilization necessarily implies sublimation and repression- i.e. Das Unbehagen. In response, H. Marcuse argues that such a deadlock represents in actuality a historical fact, supported by the discovery that within the very Freudian text itself, psychic phylogenesis is already defined only insofar as it is related to the central role played by social factors. H. Marcuse goes on to argue that such historical Unbehagen today, in late-industrial society, takes the form of surplus, unnecessary repression, as laborers must work under conditions of wage-labor, even though capital “presses to reduce labor time to a minimum.” The current paper seeks to mobilize this Marcusian framework as a valid hermeneutic method for the reading of contemporary late-industrial cultures, exploring specifically in what ways the recent liberalization of sexual norms known as hookup culture could be considered as an example of “repressive desublimation”. It also examines how such systems of libidinal economy in late capitalism functions to further mystify and hide away authentic modes of libidinal cathexis behind the horizon of the possible.

The article combines research on state statistics of the USSR and the Russian Federation and the author's memories of the society's reaction to the work of the author and his colleagues in the alternative assessment of macroeconomic indicators of the economy of the USSR and Russia. The article by V. Selyunin and G. Khanin “The Crafty Figure”, published in the February issue of “Novy Mir” magazine in 1987, was a real shock to millions of Soviet people. In this paper, the author returns to the problem of statistics distortion in the Soviet and post-Soviet years, focusing on the huge distortions of the results and factors of the economic development of the USSR during 1928-1987 period by the Soviet economic statistics. The author describes the reaction to the “Crafty Figure” of the statistical service, the scientific community and the population of the USSR, as well as foreign economic Sovietologists, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. The author criticizes S.C. Dzarasov’s evaluation of the debate in the United States around the “The Crafty Figure” as the proof of the correctness of the estimates of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR. The author shows that the quality of economic statistics in the Russian Federation has not improved compared with the Soviet period, and the cost and dynamics of fixed assets, natural indicators of production, financial indicators, employment have even significantly worsened. The article presents the results of alternative assessments of the economic development of the Russian Federation for the 1992-2015 period. The author and his colleagues received these estimates using a different methodology than similar estimates of the Soviet period. The results of the calculations of recent years allow us to conclude that real economic indicators are much worse than those published by the Federal State Statistics Service: the dynamics of GDP and the output of the real economy, labor productivity, and the dynamics of fixed assets. The author also analyzes the reaction of the statistical service of the Russian Federation and the executive authorities, the scientific and economic community, the media, the population of the Russian Federation, Western economists and research centers to this research on alternative assessments of the post-Soviet period, conducted by the author and his colleagues. The author explains the reasons for the difference in the reactions during the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods.

The article considers ethical, ontological and cultural implications of time travel. The author analyzes paradoxes of such travelling as well as physical and philosophical possibilities of creating a time machine. The paper shows that the creation of a time machine, if implemented in practice, will entail rethinking of most ethical norms. The theory of relativity and quantum theory give the conceptual possibility of having different ways of transferring information and physical objects to the past. This article is devoted to the philosophical (ethical and ontological) and cultural studies of the prospects for travels in time, and the author makes an attempt to analyze the paradoxes which mankind will inevitably encounter in such travels. In 1949, the great mathematician and Einstein’s friend, Kurt Gödel, constructed the first mathematical models of the universe, in which a journey into the past, at least in theory, is possible. Within the framework of Einstein's general theory of relativity, Gödel found an exact cosmological solution to the Einstein field equations, which contains closed time-like curves, i.e. curves in space-time, which, in spite of the fact that they are closed, represent possible trajectories of objects. An object moving along such a trajectory would have gone back to its own past to the very moment in which it began its travel. The author comes to the conclusion, that theoretically time travel is valid. Humankind is trying to model the situations it will face if the time machine is ever built and to resolve the potential paradoxes of displacements in time.

The author considers the problems of the opportunity to travel in time in the historical context and at the conceptual level. Though all living beings travel in time in a certain sense, this paper discusses the possibility of free movement in time in any direction. It is noted that in the Universe of Newton the time flowed uniformly and rectilinearly in one direction, which precluded the possibility of traveling through time. A special theory of relativity indicated the possibility of slowing down the time at speeds approaching the speed of light. At the same time, the body weight grows to infinity, the speed of light is unattainable. The fantasy sought some opportunities to overcome this light barrier, believing that in this case it is possible to get into the past, and considered emerging paradoxes. In a number of solutions of the equations of the general theory of relativity, certain time-like loops have been found for various models of the medium. Moving along such a closed curve, you can return from the trip earlier than go to it. Corridor in time form black holes, space strings, wormhole tunnels, etc., in which you can "accelerate" to near-light velocity on at speeds approaching the speed of light. These possibilities of time travel are divided into four groups: displacement by means of velocities close to the speed of light; the use of closed trajectories of curved space-time near massive rotating bodies or a rotating universe; “piercing” a black hole through the “tunnel of time”; parallel quantum universes. The author considers each of these mathematical possibilities. A time traveler is on the horizon of events, where the equations of the Einstein theory must work together with the laws of quantum mechanics. But still there isn’t a universal theory and therefore in the “time machine” something prevents from travelling into the past. The models and assumptions of the theory are associated with the problem of matching free will with the rigor of physical laws.

The author considers productivity, possible consequences and the scope of the Gödel approach to the solution of the Einstein equation. The latter is a system of partial differential equations and the number of its solutions is very limited. There are literally several solutions for the simplest cases. Therefore, Gödel’s solution is a valuable one, as it is the solution to a very difficult problem. As a consequence of Gödel’s solution of the Einstein’s equation, the concept of cyclic time arises, which contradicts the European tradition of understanding time as a linear sequence. However, science hasn’t developed a satisfactory concept of time yet, and the one used in the theory of relativity is absolutization in the spirit of Newton. The thing is that Einstein, developing his theory of relativity, considered timepiece in space-time parameters as ideal, not real device. The assumption of a timepiece as a material device introduces a quantum uncertainty into the process of measuring time. If a timepiece is considered to be material, then it will be affected by gravitational fields, which will result in the readings change of the device. According to the uncertainty principle, the quantum system in the relativistic context will require the imposition of a measurability limit, which is in complete agreement with the requirements of quantum gravity. The idea of cyclic time may be consonant with the notion of space-time rotation in a multidimensional space. This idea was used by P. Dirac to describe the concept of spin by means of quaternions, which is equivalent to a double cyclic rotation in a multidimensional space. In addition, the cyclic time accords with the model of the cyclic universe, this approach was suggested for solving the problem of fine-tuning the parameters. The notion of cyclic time is considered to be unnatural and the possibility of its adoption in the socio-cultural context is rather vague, though the idea of cyclicity is close to Eastern Philosophy. Actually, the idea of cyclic time is reflected in the eastern calendars, therefore the issue of public awareness is a matter of changing the already established paradigm to another.

The closed-time hypothesis generates many nontrivial problems of conceptual nature. Models with closed timelike curves exist in several theoretically possible spaces: in the Gödel, de Sitter, Tipler cylinder, in the wormhole, etc. In the de Sitter universe, closed timelike curves exist under two important conditions: the homogeneity of the universe and the rotation of particles of dust-like matter. The author considers the issue of speed of movement in time and infl uence of the past changes on the present. He also discusses the hypothesis of the existence of a multi-world universe, the meaning of time loop, the Gödel concept of time. The author analyzes the nature of time and two basic concepts of time: substantive and relational.

Variations on the theme of time travel, which K. Sharov unfolds in his article, refer to three interrelated, but methodologically very different areas: to the fi eld of mathematical models of the universe, philosophical culturology and science fi ction. In his opinion, the opportunity of time travel originates from the solution of Einstein’s equations, implemented by K. Gödel. This creates problems in interpretation of ontological concepts and their correlation as “causality”, “action”, and “time arrow”. In the 1980s, after Gödel’s death an outstanding astrophysicist and cosmologist I. D. Novikov formulated the fundamental difficulty in evaluation of the time travel context. The principle of self-consistency removes such paradoxes of travel into the past, as the violation of causality and the “butterfl y effect”. This principle states that attempts to change the present by local intervention in the past do not stand a chance of success, because there are many variants of the development of events, and only those, which are globally self-consistent on all parts of space and time, with the exception of singularities, are implemented. Most likely, physical journeys in time do not threaten us either in the near or the distant future. Then why is the humankind wandering in their thoughts through the dark depths of the unknown past or future? The humankind needs to determine itself in the present, so it is necessary to fi nd or construct  a refl ective position, allowing us to see our position clearly. Temporality is the most important characteristic of human existence. We support the connection of times with the help of our memory and hope; we know that we are mortal, and we hope to bring a recipe for salvation from the journey into the future or to change our destiny by traveling into the past.