The paper demonstrates that the problem of explaining naturalistically the content of mental states is the hard problem, similar to the hard problem of consciousness. The greater part of contemporary philosophers believe that we can naturalistically explain content within the functionalist paradigm, using for example the concept of information. However, D. Hutto and E. Myin, whose views are analyzed in the work, show that contemporary naturalistic theories that use various concepts of information miss the most essential characteristics of the content associated with the concepts of reference, truth, implication. Hutto and Myin believe that a naturalistic explanation of the content of basic mental states is impossible. The authors correctly diagnosed the issue, but they did not reveal its full hardness. The paper demonstrates that the hardness of explaining the content of mental states is necessitated by clarifying the normative nature of the content from the standpoint of naturalism. The work also analyzes McDowell’s naturalistic approach to understanding the normative character of conscious experience that people have, and notes that we have to expand McDowell’s position in order to include in the explanation the conscious experience of other living beings. It is exactly the expanded version of McDowell’s naturalism that allows us to see the hardness of the problem of explaining the content of mental states.

The article discusses Neil Levy’s argument against compatibilist theories of moral responsibility based on his concept of luck. The author considers possible ways for criticizing the concept of moral responsibility by undermining the control condition or the epistemic condition. Levi follows the second path. The author analyzes specifcs in Levy’s interpretation of the epistemic condition: according to Levy, the epistemic condition is built into the control one; it is considered from an internalist position (from the point of view of availability to an agent of the grounds for his action). Levy analyzes the concept of luck and identifes several types of it: chancy and non-chancy, present and constitutive. Cases of luck are not controlled by an agent, and he or she is not responsible for them. Then the author considers Levy’s argument against compatibilism based on his concept of luck: any compatibilist explanation of an action for which an agent is morally responsible rests either on constitutive luck, or on present luck, or on a combination of them. The substantiation of such a trilemma leads Levy to the concept of intellectual vice. FitzPatrick’s answer to the issue formulated by Levy is analyzed. It is shown that, even though Fitzpatrick’s solution is problematic, his general approach is correct: it is necessary to develop a theory of epistemic responsibility by the means of virtue epistemology and show its connection with moral responsibility.

This article presents an analysis of P.F. Strawson’s approach to the phenomenon of moral responsibility. First, the crux of Strawson’s approach is introduced. It is then followed by a critique of it. The crux of Strawson’s approach according to my interpretation is (1) to ground being responsible in holding responsible and (2) to ground holding responsible in emotional reactions. I show that although the thesis (1) contradicts the ordinary point of view, it can be defended. I criticize the second thesis and show that there is both holding responsible without emotion and the experience of emotion without holding responsible. Holding responsible without emotion can be accomplished by a non-emotional rational agent as well as by a rational agent who is not well versed in his/her feelings. It is possible to experience emotion without holding anyone responsible if one does not use one’s emotion as a way of blaming or praising. If we can separate emotional responses from holding responsible, then there is no grounding relation between the two. Consequently, we are in a position to reconsider Strawson’s view of moral responsibility.

The article is concerned with two opposite views on the future of analytic philosophy, as presented by P.M.S. Hacker and T. Williamson. According to the frst, conservative, the best prospect is the preservation of methodological attitudes of the linguistic turn. Sharing such point of view P.M.S. Hacker is convinced that analytic philosophers should completely abandon the establishing metaphysical truths and limit themselves to research of the verbal level of thinking. According to the second, more progressive, methodological attitudes of the linguistic turn should be discarded, and the radical ban on metaphysics should be rethought. T. Williamson is favoring that kind of revision. In the opinion of the author of the article, both points of view interpret the history of analytic philosophy in a simplifed manner, ignoring the inevitability of the conflict between the two primordial “super tasks” of that tradition: on the one hand, the eradication of speculative-metaphysical philosophizing, on the other, putting it on a scientifc track. Consideration of analytical philosophy in the context of the truth of only one of those lines obstructs a correct assessment of its prospects.

The paper aims to analyze Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. The argument might be considered as a way to criticize the Cartesian account of self-knowledge, which is based on the thesis of the privileged access agent has to her mental states. First, I present the argument itself as well as the three versions of the main objection to one of the premises. The objection is motivated by the reliability constraint on knowledge: a) the anti-luminosity argument is a sorites argument; b) the antiluminosity argument neglects the constitutive connection between being in a mental state and knowing about being in it; c) the reliability principle itself is not well motivated. Second, I argue that the reliability principle helps the anti-luminosity argument to question the very concept of self-knowledge in Cartesianism.

Among the diversity of cities as a specifc social phenomenon, a special place is occupied by single-industry towns, the history of their origin, the functioning of their city-forming and city-servicing industries, the organization of social and cultural life of the population. The reasons for their occurrence in Russia are different. They are primarily manifested in the uniqueness of geographical and economic features, including natural resources, the variety of goals and objectives of the development of the national economy and the specifcs of the territories, and often without considering the social structure and characteristics of the population of these territories. However, the development of many single-industry towns in the new Russia is undergoing serious difculties, a signifcant part of them has practically ceased to exist or is in a state of degradation. The other part has some reserves for its partial functioning or a plan to rebuild its economic organism. After the crisis of the 1990s, the third part gradually retained and acquired a new niche in the changed economic conditions. But in addition to purely industrial, technical and technological problems, all single-industry towns face an acute social problem of further existence, development, and even survival, which directly affects the life of the population of these cities, well-being, quality and standard of living, and their future.

In September 2021 elections of deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation will be held, where a number of new political parties take part, as well as parties that, due to a certain rebranding, can be designated as “renewed”. From the beginning of 2020, those parties began to engage in their promotion within the framework of the election campaign in various regional legislative bodies of state power. Due to the fact that almost all the new party projects under study had previously got seats in a number of legislative assemblies, they could be elected to the State Duma without collecting signatures.

Considering that less than a month is left until the single election day, the authors decided to analyze the activities of those parties in terms of promotion in traditional and online media in order to assess the overall level of activity in the election campaign and trace its connection with the prospects for new political parties to enter the Russian Parliament. The authors also classify the parties under study by their type of organization, ideological orientation and determine the intermediate results of their activities within the framework of the election campaign.

The perception of positive and negative features of the distance education by students of Moscow schools and universities is considered. By comparison of the sociological surveys data conducted before the pandemic and those done currently the author reveals a number of invariant difculties for students associated with adaptation to the general learning environment and interaction with the teacher. The main obstacles to the distance learning progress were the organizational unpreparedness of universities and schools, as well as the overload of the Internet and educational platforms. The reasons for the predominance of a positive attitude to distance learning over a negative one are the time-savings, increased mobility and the use of new opportunities for self-education.

The article analyzes the experience of using results of the public opinion polls in the regulation of the local self-government system. The author of the article focuses on the fact that it is not only the assessment of the effectiveness of the activities of local authorities that is of particular importance for the formation of relevant models for the organization of local self-government allowing to implement the main provisions of federal laws, but also the use of results of the public opinion, allowing to analyze the socio-political situation in municipalities, as well as to improve the quality of interaction with the population.

At the same time, the contradictory role of local self-government is noted, since low awareness of the population leads to unwillingness to be involved in the management process. The author substantiates the idea that sociological research, being a tool for obtaining operational information, allows timely identifcation of political and social moods, preferences and expectations in society, the potential for the development of a municipality, as well as measures necessary to initiate such development. Finally it is concluded that making the effective management decisions, optimizing the local self-government system, and, consequently, the stability of the institution itself, is impossible without analyzing and taking into account the information communicated by the society.

The article considers the specifcs in the formation of the innovators strata for the social structure of Russian society in the context of the ongoing digitalization process. It pays special attention to the role of the state in the process, and analyzes main forms of the state support for the innovative development in the Russian Federation.

It also shows the interrelation of the concepts of “knowledge economy”, “digital economy” and digitalization and highlights and studies the main directions of digitalization in the innovative sector of the economy as well as the advantages of digitalization of the frst and second order. Particular attention is paid to the analysis in the development of the innovative potential of human capital in Russia. The basic factors hindering innovative development are derived. The processes of social dynamics in Russian society in the feld of creating an innovative and digital environment are investigated. The author proves an urgency of the development and implementation for the system of public-private partnership in the feld of high technologies. A brief analysis of regulatory documents in the feld of digitalization and innovative development is presented.

The object of the article is considering female portraits by Vigée Le Brun, presenting the mother with child and created in Russia. That group of masterpieces constitutes an important phenomenon for the understanding of national tradition in a family portrait – a type of genre which markedly develops just at the turn of 18th–19th centuries with active participation of foreign painters. A close examination of portraits contributes to the identifcation of specifc features which included the thoroughness of interior’s depiction, the neutrality of portrait characteristic and the moderation in the display of maternal feelings. Those features give an opportunity not only to determine an artistic expression of family portrait in the work of Vigee Le Brun, but also to understand a value of masterpieces for the client. For Russian women of the epoch the presentation of Self with a child became a type of revealing portrait which emphasized her image of mother and assumed the exaltation of a model by combining methods of ceremonial and chamber picture.

For the frst time in Russian historiography the article collects and systematizes information concerning art exhibitions in Paris in the eighteenth century, which makes it possible to identify the cultural and social significance of that phenomenon. Exposition activity is seen as a new and very significant phenomenon of cultural life at that time, a symptom of the democratization of art, which entailed the development of mass reflection on the role and signifcance of creative work in the form of a well-developed art criticism. A study of sources such as the minutes of the Royal Academy and the collection of critical reviews of art exhibitions (Deloigne’s Collection) at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris allowed seeing and appreciating the immediate reactions of contemporaries to metropolitan exhibitions of various scales. A wide variety of the public, as well as the renewed role of the viewer, overturned the idea of art as a luxury available only to the elite, and turned the visual arts in France into an asset of the nation.

The article deals with some aspects of the theory of vision, the theory of circular motion by Leonardo da Vinci. He believed that visible objects emit infnitely many rays, each ray carries information to all points in the atmosphere. The perceiving eye, moving, not only sees the world, but feels it, and is a part of it. He compared the spherical rotation of the eye with similar rotational functions of the body. The possibilities of rotations as universal forms of movement of the body and eyes, and as the basis of the eternal mechanics of the universe, were studied in detail by Leonardo, using the example of anatomical experiments, kinetics and optics. He used observations in the feld of anatomy and biomechanics for his engineering inventions and pictorial compositions. The article also considers little-studied drawings from the Huygens Code, on the topic of circular motion and changes in the proportions of the human body, which researchers associate with unknown drawings by Leonardo.