Digital Sovereignty of Adolescents

This paper takes up the approach of individual Digital Sovereignty and develops a first systematization of the concept. It defines it as all the abilities and opportunities a person possesses to realize his/her own plans and decisions in dealing with or depending on digital media in a competent, self-determined and secure manner and against the background of individual, technical, legal and social conditions. The significance of individual Digital Sovereignty for adolescents is illustrated by the results of an exploratory study in which we conducted group discussions with 106 eighth-graders of different school types. Results show that most adolescents have only a vague notion about their own data traces and the use they are put to. Only a small number of seven pupils – the whizzes – stood out due to their extraordinary understanding and deep reflections on digital media.

Digital Sovereignty of Adolescents

This paper takes up the approach of individual Digital Sovereignty and develops a first systematization of the concept. It defines it as all the abilities and opportunities a person possesses to realize his/her own plans and decisions in dealing with or depending on digital media in a competent, self-determined and secure manner and against the background of individual, technical, legal and social conditions. The significance of individual Digital Sovereignty for adolescents is illustrated by the results of an exploratory study in which we conducted group discussions with 106 eighth-graders of different school types. Results show that most adolescents have only a vague notion about their own data traces and the use they are put to. Only a small number of seven pupils – the whizzes – stood out due to their extraordinary understanding and deep reflections on digital media.

What Law Must Be Able to Do: The Coercion Thesis and the Need to Keep the Peace

Chapter 4 begins the second step of the modest analysis undertaken in this volume with an argument grounded in a claim about the function something must be able to perform to be properly characterized as a system of law. It argues that it is a conceptually necessary condition for something to count as a system of law that it is reasonably contrived to keep the peace among rationally competent self-interested subjects like us in worlds of acute material scarcity like ours by regulating behavior through the governance of norms metaphysically capable of guiding behavior. But the only way that an institutional normative system could be reasonably contrived to do this is by backing some mandatory norms prohibiting assaults on persons and property with the threat of a coercive sanction.

Can There Be Law in a Society of Angels?

Chapter 10 rejects the society-of-angels argument against the Coercion Thesis on the ground that the psychological features of the “angels” are too far removed from what is remotely probable for rationally competent self-interested subjects like us who live in worlds of acute material scarcity like ours to tell us anything of theoretical significance about the content of our concept of law. There is nothing that counts as a legal system in the society of angels because our conceptual practices presuppose that the practices constituting something as a system of law are intended and reasonably contrived to regulate the behavior of rationally competent self-interested subjects like us who would never, as a descriptive matter of contingent fact, conclusively defer to the dictates of a purely institutional authority the way the angels do because we should not do so, as an objective matter of normative practical rationality.

The Coercion Thesis

Chapter 1 fleshes out the content of the Coercion Thesis, according to which it is a conceptually necessary condition for something to count as a legal system that it backs some mandatory norms governing non-official behavior with the threat of a coercive sanction. It begins with an analysis of the compound concept-term coercive sanction, distinguishing the deterrence and punitive functions they are reasonably contrived to perform, as a conceptual matter. The chapter then situates the Coercion Thesis with respect to the demands of morality and ends by explicating what the Coercion Thesis presupposes and implies with respect to what considerations characteristically motivate rationally competent self-interested subjects like us.

Coercive Sanctions and International Law

Chapter 9 argues that, regardless of whether it is properly characterized as law, the U.N. Charter system of international regulation authorizes the imposition of economic and diplomatic measures that count as coercive sanctions, as I have explicated the notion in this volume, because they are reasonably contrived to deter and punish non-compliance. While these measures differ in salient ways from the coercive sanctions authorized by systems of municipal law, they nonetheless count as coercive sanctions; all that is required for something to count as a coercive sanction, as I have explicated the notion, is that it imposes non-trivial detriment that rationally competent self-interested subjects are likely to experience as something that deters and punishes non-compliance. The Charter system is thus consistent with the Coercion Thesis and not a counterexample to it.

Methodological Aspects of the Use of Software in the Teaching of Engineering Disciplines: Tasks, Problems and Prospects

The main directions of improving training that can be achieved as part of the introduction of new software in the teaching of engineering disciplines are considered. The necessity of ensuring the continuity of training within the framework of a unified concept of using software tools is noted. The analysis of needs in the formation of new competencies based on the results of a survey of graduate students of BMSTU, and the views of employers, which showed the closeness of the representations of students, teachers and employers. It is noted that the developed software application technologies should guarantee their inextricable link. New approaches to the teaching of engineering disciplines based on computer modeling, which are used in world practice, are considered. Trends in the application of modeling technologies, including the use of integrated software products, are noted. The main modern trends are active training and teamwork, group training. These computer technologies have taken the project approach to learning to a new stage. New software products allow not only the formation of special competencies, but also provide the opportunity to acquire important communication skills. New opportunities for student motivation are opening up. Access to an open electronic educational environment, including open packages of applied engineering design programs allows you to create self-education skills, without which it is impossible for an engineer to work in rapidly changing conditions. The active role of the teacher in effective and competent self-education is noted.

Feelings and the Ascription of Feelings

This chapter is a philosophical discussion of beliefs, knowledge, sensations, and feelings. It also discusses self-ascription of actions and intentions. In particular, it examines David Finkelstein’s response to some remarks by Ludwig Wittgenstein about the conception of oneself, or the kind of self-consciousness, involved in ascribing feelings and sensations rather than thoughts or beliefs to ourselves. It also considers Finkelstein’s rejection of John McDowell’s claim that a sensation must be understood as ‘something that is not present prior to or independently of its being brought under a concept’. The chapter argues that when we come to the capacity for self-predication, knowledge of the truth of what is said is also part of competent self-ascription.