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S. Abrutyn stresses that the concept of generalized symbolic media has not only remained relevant, but also has significant methodological potential. Although this concept was popularized by T. Parsons and N. Luhmann, and later by J. Habermas,444 its origins can be seen in the “Capital” of K. Marx and in the economic sociology of M. Weber, and, in addition, in the phenomenology of G. Simmel.445 The author stresses the similarity of the concept to P. Bourdie’s theory of economic capital, but notes that all types of social exchange in the application of the French scientist’s approach can be reduced to economic exchange, although history shows that this is not the case. Т. Parsons also exaggerated the importance of economics to the concept of generalized symbolic media, but it should be borne in mind that in different times and places, individual intermediaries were more valuable and better integrated than money. Limiting of the media to money can distort the picture, as it is only a view of capitalist society.446

The course of reasoning of S. Abrutyn is as follows. Т. Parsons and N. Smelser borrowed the concept of generalized symbolic media from the German economic and philosophical school. Initially, the term was used to describe the exchange between the economic and political systems (i.e. the process of converting power and money). Studying power, T. Parsons came to the conclusion that two more media were needed to reconcile the approach with his vision of the four subsystems of the social system. These new media were influence and value commitments. The qualities of all media other than money were modeled on the basis of the quality of money, as the latter are an ideal example of a generalized symbolic media. As T. Parsons believed, in order for something to be considered a generalized symbolic media, it must have: (1) value, i.e., to be a symbolic embodiment of the objects meant, (2) interest, i.e., a close and clear connection with such

444The views of T. Parsons, N. Luhmann and J. Habermas, albeit without explicit application of the concept of generalized symbolic media and (or) their analogues to the object of legal relationship, as proposed in this study, have had a significant impact on the modern philosophy of law in Russia, see for example: Grafsky V.G. Legal Communication and Legal Communion // Proceedings of the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 2013. № 4. – P. 25–36

445Ibid. P. 446.

446Ibid. P. 446–447.

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an object, (3) means to determine which objects have value, and (4) a normative scheme of rules. Т. Parsons, however, may seem inconsistent because in one place he referred to generalized symbolic media as a currency and in another as a language. In turn, by criticizing T. Parsons, N. Luhmann rejected the idea that influence and value commitments are independent media, as they are already implied in the case of all other media. He also saw media not as objects of exchange, but as modes of communication, adding to the power and money the truth for science and love for kinship relations. However, N. Luhmann’s views can also be criticized. Specifically, since the number of media does not necessarily have to be reduced to four or two initial ones (S. Abrutyn notes that it would be unnatural to correlate well-known media with the religious system – it has its own kind of media). In general, although T. Parson’s approach was focused on economy in one-sided manner, it was also wrong to reduce the generalized symbolic media to communication as such instead. S. Abrutyn also notes that perceptions of generalized symbolic media were subsequently developed by J. Habermas, J. Coleman, D. Baldwin, T. Turner, L. Vanderberg and S. Abrutyn himself.447

It is important that S. Abrutyn accepts the concept of T. Parsons, but makes a reservation that brings his interpretation of the concept of generalized symbolic media closer to the discourse of the semantic limits of law. Т. Parsons assumed that the exchange takes place between systems, while S. Abrutyn stresses that the exchange, mediated by generalized symbolic media, takes place between individuals and groups – “GSM [Generalized Symbolic Media] must be seen as extant in real relationships and groups”.448 As a consequence, such media are no less relevant for the micro-level of research than for the macro-level.449 In other words, it would also be useful to study the exchange between real people in terms of the exchange of generalized symbolic media. Finally, S. Abrutyn

447Ibid. PP. 448–449.

448Ibid. P. 450.

449Ibid.

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suggests that generalized symbolic media could in itself be a goal and thus be seen not only as a means of facilitating communication, but also as a resource – symbolic and material. It should be noted that in our study this view, albeit implicitly, was implied in the previous paragraphs, but S. Abrutyn stresses that this aspect of the generalized symbolic media was not developed by either N. Luhmann, J. Habermas or T. Parsons himself. This idea has an interesting branch that the author points out: each of the generalized symbolic media has a cultural context and connotations that draw a picture of the “ideal pursuer”. For example, in the case of priesthood, it is an ascetic, and in the case of love, it is a romantic. In the light of all of the above, it is obvious that generalized symbolic media can be accumulated and act as a means of exchange.450

S. Abrutyn defines generalized symbolic media as

«…intra-institutional clusters of symbolic and material resources that act as mechanisms by which institutional culture can be acquired, used, developed, and transmitted».451

However, S. Abrutyn himself continues the economic metaphor, perhaps unconsciously – he notes that every institutional group has an elite of

«…institutional entrepreneurial class” who received certain [symbolic] independence from other elites.452 Generalized symbolic media «organise talk and cognition; they are exchanged as Parsons presumed; they are not just placeholders of value, but valued things in themselves, and thus resources to be pursued; and, as such, they work to formulate worldviews and ideologies that make economy different from polity different from religion both mentally, but also in physical, temporal, and social space».453

It is also important for us how S. Abrutyn justifies that money is not the only or the main generalized symbolic media. The author stresses that the problem of media should be

450Ibid. P. 451.

451Ibid.

452It's financial at the same time if you take the money or convert into money.

453Ibid. PP. 451–452.

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viewed from the point of view of creating and maintaining social order in complex societies. He notes the view of M. Weber, according to which money has become an instrument legitimizing indirect exchange (as opposed to barter), and G. Simmel, who believed that money literally shortened the distance between people, because it was a variable for “standardized, formalized and separable value”, thus becoming a force for cultural integration.454 At the same time, as S. Abrutyn points out, historical and cultural studies show that the “market” in the ancient states of Mesopotamia, Egypt and, for example, China consisted not of money, but of power. In addition, in some cases, in which money was used, it was only the appearance – in fact, it was about loyalty, which S. Abrutyn considers as an independent generalized symbolic media. What is equally important, from a historical point of view, loyalty, thus, no less important than money.455 The author then demonstrates very convincingly how the formation of power as a generalized symbolic media, as well as sacredness in the same quality, took place, using historical material.456 These components of S. Abrutyn’s argument are important for us to demonstrate that money is not the main, but one of the many generalized symbolic intermediaries. In light of this, it becomes clearer which of the relations can potentially be regulated by their “sociocurrency value” and which cannot.

In S. Abrutyn’s system, there are not four, but ten generalized symbolic media that correspond to ten institutional domains, rather than four subsystems of the social system, and it follows from the author’s views that this list is not necessarily exhaustive:

1) The institutional field of kinship corresponds to such media as love and loyalty. They constitute the language and external objects associated with the creation and designation of obligations to others.

454Ibid. P. 452.

455Ibid.

456Ibid.

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2)The institutional field of economics obviously corresponds to such a media as money, which according to S. Abrutyn is the language and external objects associated with the production and distribution of goods and services.

3)The institutional field of polity, with the same degree of clarity, corresponds to such a media as power, which makes up the language and external objects related to the control of actions and relations of others and subordination to the superior.

4)The institutional field of law is corresponded by such media as justice and dispute resolution, which constitute the language and external objects related to the resolution of disputes arising from public legal relations and appealing to the norms of fairness and morality.457

5)The institutional field of religion is corresponded by such media as sacredness and piety, which make up the language and external objects related to actions, exchanges and communications with the unobserved supernatural field.458

6)The institutional field of education corresponds to such media as learning, (or “knowledge”, depending on the context) which is a language and external objects related to the acquisition and transfer of material and cultural knowledge.

7)The institutional field of science is corresponded by such media as applied knowledge and truth, which make up the language and external objects related to actions, exchanges and communication based on the standards of acquisition and use of proven knowledge about all dimensions of social, biological and psycho-chemical universes.

457This interpretation, at first glance, may potentially conflict with the idea of the concept of semantic limits of law, according to which the reference to moral values refers not to the field of pure absurdity, but to the intermediate field of “weighing” [moral] values. But such a conflict is only visible – the application of the concept of generalized symbolic intermediaries for the qualification of “social and currency value” of the subject of legal relations is carried out in a different sense. Moral value or moral significance in this case refers not to the argumentation, but to the direct subject of the legal relationship.

458Despite some vagueness in this formulation, from the point of view of both theoretical and empirical sociology, it is not what is (or what is not) really important here, but how it is reconstructed as part of the institution of subjectively objective social reality.

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8)The institutional field of medicine corresponds to such media as health, which is the language and external objects related to the actions, exchanges and communication related to the care of the body’s normal functioning.

9)The institutional field of sport is represented by such media as competitiveness, which constitutes language and external objects related to actions, exchanges and communications based on regulated conflicts that give rise to winners and losers based on the efforts of teams and players.

10)Finally, the institutional field of art corresponds to such media as beauty,459 which makes up language and external objects related to the standards of obtaining and applying knowledge about beauty, emotional reaction and pleasure.460

We see certain similarity to this approach in the following quotation of P. Bourdieu:

“...there is not one economy, but several different economies. To aspire to the creation of a general theory of economics of practices, which is the goal of any properly oriented anthropologist (whether he is a sociologist, ethnologist, economist, etc.), means to take into account the fact that there are different economies, i.e., universums endowed with different objective and subjective logic, such universums that they cannot be abolished, as well as to describe one of these universums in the language of the other…”461

While analyzing the applicability of S. Abrutyn’s concept in the discourse of the problem of the semantic limits of law, which are considered in terms of “seriousness” or “non-seriousness” of the subject of legal relations, we have not identified any need to criticize or rethink it in principle – it seems that it can be applied in this form (although it may be further developed), because now it can be used to determine the “socio-currency value” of specific subjects of legal relations. Subsequent studies of theoretical sociology

459Aesthetics can argue with this definition as a discipline of philosophy, but this does not fundamentally change the possibility to see a generalized symbolic intermediary in the institutional field of art, whether it is beauty or something else.

460Ibid. P. 454.

461P. Bourdieu. Economic Anthropology: a Course of Lectures at College de France (1992 – 1993) / Transl. from French by D. Kralechkin. – Moscow: Delo Publishing House, Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 2019 – P. 93.

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may also reflect other generalized symbolic media – perhaps including time in terms of the time it takes for the same user to acquire any values in a virtual environment.462

These institutional domains and symbolic media illustrate the differences between the subject matter of jurisprudence and theoretical sociology, since the models generated by these domains are asymmetric. From the point of view of law, and especially the philosophy of law, the latter may include several institutional fields and generalized symbolic media, which are distinguished in theoretical sociology – for example, the institutional field of polity and such media as power can be quite well attributed to law by a legal theorist. However, this is of no fundamental importance for the question of applicability of this concept to the discourse of the semantic limits of law, because we are interested in generalized symbolic media not in terms of their essential properties relevant to the process of reconstruction of social practices, but from the point of view of their correlation with a specific subject of legal relations through the idea of the possible “sociocurrency value” of the latter.

Now, the main thing is that, like T. Parsons, in S. Abrutyn’s theoretical and sociological concept, these generalized symbolic media corresponding to certain institutional area are, first, convertible, and, second, can and do have external referents of value (in this, by the way, S. Abrutyn’s approach differs from the initial approach of T. Parsons). It is not difficult to draw an interdisciplinary parallel and identify the unifying factor: it is exactly external referent of value within the framework of the concept of the semantic limits of law that can be related to a specific object of social relationship. If this happens, such a subject should be considered as “serious”.

462 From the practice of included observation: multiplayer games, which involve the user in the process of converting real time to virtual values, differ significantly from games where this is not expected. In some games, players who do not convert enough real time to virtual achievements lose a significant advantage, but this represents a serious invasion of real privacy and can naturally affect the user’ success in real life. This is probably the aspect of online gaming that we are facing here that may not be an absurd area to interfere with the law – as in the case of online games in China, for example. See e.g.: China to Crack Down on Children’s Video Gaming Time Amid Fears Over Addiction [Electronic resource] // The Telegraph. 31 August 2018. – [Site]. – URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/31/china-crack-childrens-video-gaming-time- amid-fears-addiction/ (accessed: 24.02.2019).

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For the purposes of this study, it should be emphasized that a generalized symbolic media is an institutional phenomenon. What is of value (significance) to an individual member of society outside the communicative context (in other words, what cannot be a means of exchange, at least within a certain institutional group), cannot be regarded as something of “socio-currency value”, or as an external referent of value in relation to a generalized symbolic media.

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CHAPTER 3. Reconstructing of the conception of the semantic limits of law: contents, significance, methodological potential

§ 1. Reconsidering the problem of the “magic circle”: from qualification of social relationships to qualification of their object

Within this research, the methodology of reconstruction of the semantic limits of law employs, on the one hand, the instruments of legal philosophy, and on the other – [theoretical] sociology [of law]. Such an approach stands close to the problem indicated by J. Habermas. As R. Cotterell puts it:

«For Habermas, any legal philosophy that ignores the complex nature of the social, as social science studies it, will be increasingly irrelevant in addressing the problems of contemporary law. But sociological approaches to law that ‘screen out all normative aspects’ (1996: 6), treating law ‘externally’ as an object, will be no less irrelevant, since they do not address questions of law’s moral meaning to those who live subject to it and need its authority. What is needed is ‘an analysis equally tailored to the normative reconstruction and the empirical disenchantment of the legal system’ (1996: 66); one might say to law as ideal and reality».463

The conception of the semantic limits of law is oriented exactly to such a methodology supplemented at the same time by the analogy from the isomorphic theory of correspondent truth. At the same time, if we consider this conception, first of all, from the point of view of the problems of interpretation of legal texts and application of law, the notion of the criterion of legal significance of the objects of social relations should be considered in the context of the problem of “open texture” of the legal language in the terminology of H. Hart, and therefore – in connection with the methodology of determining the “core” and “peripheral” area of the field of meanings of the concepts used in legal texts. Further (see § 4 of Chapter 3 of this study), the conception of the semantic

463 Cotterrell R. Law, Culture and Society. Legal Ideas in the Mirror of Social Theory. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006. – P.

32.

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limits of law will be reconstructed in “reverse order” to highlight the sequence of its application as an approach to the interpretation of legal texts. However, at this stage, we will maintain the sequence of reasoning and focus on how the legal significance of the subject of social relations related to simulation in the media reality should be determined.

Let us make a preliminary summary of the process of the search for methodological “landmarks”. Thus, the problem of the semantic limits of law in the conditions of the medial turn presents itself in the most apparent way in the three pervasive examples based on the methodology of thought experiment in the first case and analysis of empirical material in the second and third cases.

1)Hypothetical interpretation of the provisions of Article 105 of the RF CrC (“Murder”) whereunder the wording “intentional inflicting of death to other human” can mean, inter alia, a “murder” that one computer game character commits in respect of other one which is considered as a “human” in the virtual world. 464 In other words, such an action within virtual social reality would constitute an intentional inflicting of death to other human. Let us emphasize that the specific reference to videogames is justified in this context by the medial turn that presupposes that this phenomenon obtains a qualitatively new scale. In the end, we may apply the same reasoning to a children’s game of “cossacks and brigands” by analogy, where virtual (in broad meaning) “murders” occur every now and then, but no one would consider to accuse kids of such murders in the same sense that is meant by Article 105 of the RF CrC. At the same time, such games may be frowned upon by the pedagogics of non-violence.

2)The already customary practice of massive multiplayer game design, as well as economical and legal analysis of relationships in them that relate to virtual values, which

464 We have to emphasize that this pervasive example, in essence, can itself be interpreted as application of the technique known as reductio ad absurdum to the problem of virtual property. In order to identify those cases where law CANNOT be applied to virtual property, we make the example stronger by means of substituting the subject of relationship, that previously was property, to life.