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establishment, in late Wittgenstein’s language, of a “family resemblance” between meanings relating to easy cases of core meaning and peripheral facts of the media reality. That said, the functionality is the legally relevant criterion for such “family resemblance”. Based on common sense, functionality itself is defined by how the subject of social relationships can be used by actors (subjects of law) in a sense significant for the intersubjective social reality. With this approach, if, for example, a social institution for trading of virtual objects – the artefacts of the media reality – has emerged, then “family resemblance” between them and the core meaning of the legal concept-word “property” can be established. It should also be taken into account that new media are defined by such qualities as fractality, automation, variability, and transcoding (L. Manovich), and this, in most cases, predetermines the impossibility of structural adequacy of the artifacts of new media and the core meaning of the concept-words of those legal texts which are oriented towards establishing of technologically neutral rules of behavior. In the context of the research, the notion of functional relevance is opposed to the “fantasy nature” of social relationships object in relation to the legal reality. It is necessary to emphasize that in the context of this work we are not talking about the fantasy nature of an object as such (in virtual reality, all objects are to some extent of fantasy nature), but about the fantasy nature of representing the key functional properties of the object in virtual reality (i.e., what the objects “do” rather than “how they look”). In fact, the criterion under consideration is designated as the “criterion of reality” because objective law is by definition not possible as a simulacrum. If there is something that has certain external features of law in a society, but it is a simulacrum, there is no law in such a society. The existence of generally accepted and obligatory rules of conduct (one of the main features of law), even if they are implicit or different from those formally declared, is an empirical social fact of the intersubjective social reality. A separate legal text or other legal phenomenon can exist as a simulacrum, but law as a whole cannot. Thus, law is not a simulacrum, and simulacra
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cannot be included in the legal reality, except for the cases where the simulacrum itself acts as a socially significant object of the relationship. In view of this circumstance, there is a need to define the second criterion of absurdity in the application of law and the interpretation of legal texts in relation to the media reality.
7. In order to establish that kind of absurdity in the application of law and interpretation of legal texts, which is related to simulation in the mediaspace, the criterion of functional adequacy should be supplemented by the criterion of convertible sociocurrency value, which can be justified on the basis of the concept of generalized symbolic media, developed in theoretical sociology (the “criterion of seriousness). The origins of the concept of generalized symbolic media can be seen in early sociological and economic studies, but this concept has not yet been applied in jurisprudence, despite its methodological perspectives defined by the following premises. Generalized symbolic media are communicative means of social construction of reality. According to T. Parsons, they are characteristic of each social subsystem. Thus, for example, the power, understood as the right (and later – the monopoly) to a special type of coercion, is a “symbolic medium" for the political system. Power, directly or indirectly, legitimately or not, can be acquired by means of influence, and influence is another “symbolic medium” of the social system. This, according to T. Parsons, is an example of converting (exchange) of “social currency”. The conclusion relevant for the present study is that the social significance, including for the purposes of resolving controversial issues of law enforcement and interpretation of legal texts, is determined by such an inter-subjective “exchange value”, rather than just a certain subjective value. That said, S. Abrutyn suggests that the concept should be supplemented with the notion of “external referent of value” – a specific object that communicates the value of a generalized symbolic medium, for example, a certain banknote, an attribute of power, religious affiliation, etc. In total, he identifies ten institutional areas, each of which corresponds to a generalized symbolic medium and
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external referents of value, between which it is possible to perform exchanges at the institutional and individual levels. Hence, if the object of social relationships, interpreted as an external referent of value, has convertible “socio-currency value” – and we are talking about such generalized symbolic media as money, political power, influence and other carriers of inter-subjective values, which are constitutive of social reality, – then the application of law to the relationship with such an object is within the limits of common sense. If not, then applying law to such relationships would be potentially absurd (depending on whether or not the “criterion of reality” is also met). Possible criticism of the name of the criterion on the basis that the word “seriousness” implies a subjective attitude rather than an intersubjective quality, whereas the term “significance” would be more appropriate, does not seem convincing. “Significance” can also be subjective. Importantly, the way in which the game is played, and seriousness in the context of simulation is recognized in game studies, which are an essential part of the methodology of the approach discussed in this research.
8. In general, the proposed approach can be conceptualized in the term “semantic limits of law”, which implies the specified criteria of reality and seriousness, and expresses the philosophical and dogmatic-legal concept of the relation of real law to the simulation, updated in the conditions of the medial turn. The use of this term can be legitimized in scientific discourse by analogy with the effect of legal norms in “ordinary” space and through the concept of the media space as a symbolic space in which both socially significant meanings and simulacra can be found, setting the direction of the problem of relations between the sign and the signified in jurisprudence. The philosophical legal significance of the concept of the semantic limits of law is expressed in the understanding and explanation of the problems of law in the conditions of the medial turn. The dogmatic significance of the concept of the semantic limits of law is expressed in the fact that it allows to apply the criteria of reality and seriousness for the definition and
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justification of the absurd, not corresponding to the common sense, cases of interpretation of legal texts and application of law, and therefore can be used in the academic-grounded analysis of the legal texts and law enforcement decisions, as well as in the applied legal argumentation. The application of the concept of semantic law limits implies the following operations: (1) making a hypothesis about the absurdity of the result of interpretation of a legal text or application of law, based on the common sense, understood as the implicit rationality of law, assimilated by the subject of legal activity, who has undergone professional socialization in the conditions of the given legal order; (2) establishing that very object of social relationships, the analysis of the qualities of which is necessary for the resolution of the case, from the complex composition of facts that defines the disputed social relationships; (3) analytical determination of the core meaning of the concept-words used in the legal text for further use as a “reference point” for checking the functional adequacy (“reality”) of the identified object of social relationships; (4) verification of the functional adequacy of the identified object of social relationships to the core meaning of the relevant concept-words of the legal text; (5) assessment of the convertible sociocurrency value of the object of social relationships from the point of view of theoretical and empirical sociology; (6) structuring of the legal argumentation by “translating” the key arguments of the analysis into the language of legal dogmatism. The presented methodology makes it possible to make implicit rules of legally significant word usage explicit in R. Brandom’s terminology.
9. The concept of the semantic limits of law has a multifaceted methodological potential, which allows developing theoretical and legal notions of ontology of law, the relationship between law and morality, the analogy of law and games, as well as applied interdisciplinary notions related to creating norms in the digital economy. It is possible to defend the thesis of the validity of the hypotheses that arise directly from the study as a “spin-off” results of its findings. Thus, in the light of the rethinking of the concept of law
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of L. Fuller’s which is based on the concept of the “internal morality of law” in the context of the present study, it may be suggested that seriousness, understood as a convertible socio-currency value, in this case of a potential object of legal regulation, represents the ninth principle of the internal morality of law, since general, prospective, consistent, etc. legal rules are meaningful only if they aim to regulate social relationships in that aspect in which their object would be of inter-subjective significance rather than a simulacrum. In turn, R. Alexy’s idea of the “claim to correctness” can be similarly supplemented by the “claim to seriousness” for the same reason. From these two methodological hypotheses follows the relevance of the concept of the semantic limits of law both in the field of ontology of law and in the “separation thesis”, which defines the discussion on the relationship between law and morality. Separately, it should be noted that the development of ideas about the analogy of law and game is a natural consequence of the development of the presented concept due to the justification of the significance of the game turn for legal research and the rethinking of known ideas in this area in the context of digital transformation of society. Finally, the methodological value of the concept of the semantic limits of law for the development of applied normative issues in the digital economy is determined by the following circumstances. First, the criterion of seriousness being developed in the framework of the conception could be interpreted in the context not only of the methodology for the implementation and evaluation of the interpretation of legal texts and the application of the law, but also of an academically-grounded determination of the appropriateness of the legal regulation of social relationships in relation to “new” objects: before such an object becomes “serious”, the reasonableness of its regulation could be questioned. Second, the criterion of reality, as justified in this study, in the framework of the conception assumes the addition of semantics-related notions about a special kind of absurdity related to simulation in the media reality, which is potentially relevant to the problem area of development of tools for algorithmization of law,