Rui Silva

The article attempts to articulate Wittgensteinian and hermeneutic views of knowledge, language and understanding. Wittgenstein is not a member of the so-called hermeneutic tradition, but his late work has important affinities with the work of hermeneutic thinkers like Heidegger and Gadamer. Firstly, Wittgenstein and hermeneutics share a basic philosophical altitude that can be termed as “phenomenology of everydayness”. An important result of such an approach is the acknowledgement of the pragmatic and social dimension of knowledge. Secondly, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Gadamer reject formal or systematic theories of meaning and claim that language is the universal medium of human experience. Thirdly, they conceive of understanding as a practical ability. Wittgenstein helps us to clarify some hermeneutic themes and develops them from an antimetaphysical standpoint. On the other hand, hermeneutics can refine some aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought; a case in point is the Gadamerian doctrine of the fusion of horizons, which avoids the danger of relativism that lurks in Wittgenstein’s late work. A comparative study of Wittgenstein and hermeneutics contributes therefore to effective philosophical progress.

The philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger is a milestone in the 20th century philosophy. On the one hand, Husserl preserved the notions of subject and consciousness, avoiding naïve misconceptions of these notions and clearing new paths for philosophical investigation. On the other hand, Heidegger, departing from a criticai dialogue with Husserl’s phenomenology, challenged key presuppositions of modern philosophy by investigating the social and pragmatic dimension ofkllowledge and intentionality.

Cybercrime has increased significantly, recently, as a result of both individual and group criminal practice, and is now a threat to individuals, organisations, and democratic systems worldwide. However, cybercrime raises two main challenges for legal systems: firstly, because cybercriminals operate online, cybercrime spans beyond the boundaries of specific jurisdictions, which constrains the operation of the police and, subsequently, the conviction of the perpetrators; secondly, since cybercriminals can operate from anywhere in the world, law enforcement agencies struggle to identify the origin of the communications, especially when obfuscation strategies are used, e.g. dark web fora. Nevertheless, cybercriminals inherently use language to communicate, so the linguistic analysis of suspect communications is particularly helpful in deterring cybercriminal practice. This article reports the potential of forensic translation in the fight against cybercrime. Although the term ‘forensic translation’ is typically understood as a synonym of ‘legal translation’, it is argued that the implications of forensic translation span beyond those of legal translation, to include analyses of language rights, of the right to interpretation and translation in legal procedures (in the EU), or even investigative and intelligence practices. Translation is a pervasive activity that is conducted, not only by professional translators, but also by lay speakers of language, often using machine translation systems. The ease of use of the latter makes it particularly suitable for cross-border criminal (e.g. extortion or fraud) and cybercriminal communications (e.g. cybertrespass, cyberfraud, cyberpiracy, cyberporn or child online porn, cyberviolence or cyberstalking). This article presents the results of the analysis of cybercriminal communications from a forensic translation perspective. It demonstrates that translation is frequently used to spread cybercriminal communications, and that reverse-engineering the translational procedure will assist law enforcement agencies in narrowing down their pool of suspects and, consequently, deter cybercriminal threats.

Pretendo formular uma definição positiva de loucura: o sentimento de comoção e vertigem psíquica resultante da perceção de conhecimento extra do indivíduo sobre si próprio. Farei um percurso histórico‑filosófico e literário sobre o tópico com alguns dos principais pensadores contemporâneos, de Kant e Pinel, Hegel, Hölderlin e Nietzsche, até Wittgenstein e Derrida. Apresento uma perspetiva diferente da atual convenção cultural humanística que estabelece uma relação de causalidade eficiente entre a entidade nosológica «esquizofrenia», funcionando como Deus ex‑machina, e a produção artística, onde defendo que quem cria e faz arte é o indivíduo, o artista, e não uma suposta deficiência psíquica.

Partindo do presuposto de que Heidegger foi o autor que mais influenciou a obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer, o presente artigo visa esclarecer os contornos desta influência, analisando alguns dos principais temas do pensamento gadameriano, a saber: a historicidade da existência humana, a reabilitação da categoria do preconceito, a arte, a linguagem e a verdade. Mostra ainda como a orientação humanista de Gadamer constitui o principal ponto de divergência relativamente a Heidegger. Defende, por conseguinte, que a hermenêutica filosófica de Gadamer pode ser interpretada como uma apropriação humanista do pensamento heideggeriano. /// Taking for granted that Heidegger was the author that most deeply influenced Gadamer's work, the present article aims at a clarification of such influence by examining some of the key themes of Gadamer's thought: the historicity of human existence, the rehabilitation of prejudice, as well as the reflection on art, language, and truth. The article explains thus how Gadamer's humanism constitutes the main point of divergence from Heidegger. It claims, moreover, that Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics can be considered a humanistic appropriation of Heidegger's thought.

Fake news has been the focus of debate, especially since the election of Donald Trump (2016), and remains a topic of concern in democratic countries worldwide, given (a) their threat to democratic systems and (b) the difficulty in detecting them. Despite the deployment of sophisticated computational systems to identify fake news, as well as the streamlining of fact-checking methods, appropriate fake news detection mechanisms have not yet been found. In fact, technological approaches are likely to be inefficient, given that fake news are based mostly on partisanship and identity politics, and not necessarily on outright deception. However, as disinformation is inherently expressed linguistically, this is a privileged room for forensic linguistic analysis. This article builds upon a forensic linguistic analysis of fake news pieces published in English and in Portuguese, which were collected since 2019 from acknowledged fake news outlets. The preliminary empirical analysis reveals that fake news pieces employ particular linguistic features, e.g. at the levels of typography, orthography and spelling, and morphosyntax. The systematic identification of these features, which will allow mapping linguistic resources and patterns used in those contexts, contributes to scholarship, not only by enabling a streamlined development of computational detection systems, but more importantly by permitting the forensic linguistics expert to assist criminal investigations and give evidence in court.

John McDowell gave an important contribution to the debate on naturalism in the contemporary philosophy by proposing a “naturalism of the second nature”, which distinguishes itself by setting aside the conception of nature promoted by the modern science and for being based on the idea of second nature, reinterpreted in the light of the Sellarsian notion of the “logical space of reasons”, understood as the horizon of our world experience. He argues, accordingly, for the unboundedness of the conceptual sphere, which allows him to claim, in Mind and World, that experience justifies our beliefs because it is already conceptually articulated. The naturalism of the second nature extends to the domain of moral philosophy, gaining the form of a virtue ethics. The article points out some of the main problems of McDowell’s naturalism, like the difficulties underlying the experience conceptualism and the charge of idealism, offering also answers, inspired by McDowell himself, to these problems.

The paper analyzes the hermeneutic reflection of Heidegger and Gadamer in the light of contemporary versions of epistemological contextualism, and the departing from a distinction between attributor contextualism and inferential or issue contextualism. According to attributor contextualism, the truth-conditions of knowledge-ascriptions depend on the attributor’s context and its epistemic standards, which can be more or less demanding. In contrast to this position, inferential or issue contextualism claims that epistemic standards depend on the inferential structure of the subject’s context, and there is not a linear hierarchy of contexts ranging from low to high-standards contexts. This latter form of contextualism is congenial to hermeneutics and is discussed on the basis of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and the work of Michael Williams. In order to illustrate the contextualist implications of hermeneutics, the paper focuses on the following points: the hermeneutic circle; Heidegger’s phenomenology of everydayness; the Gadamerian analysis of the epistemological role of prejudice and tradition; and the account of understanding as a fusion of horizons.

The article aims at assessing the connection between art and the human sciences through an interpretation of Gadamer’s reflection on this subject. In Truth and Method, he reacts against the “subjectivization” of the Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics and uses the model of art to develop an account of knowledge and truth adequate to the human sciences. Gadamer argues that a work of art contains a truth claim and can be considered a form of knowledge, to the extent that it reveals aspects of reality that could go otherwise unnoticed. Because a wrong aesthetic theory also influenced the history of hermeneutics, Gadamer criticizes what he calls the hermeneutics of reconstruction of the XIX century, proposing as an alternative his own hermeneutics of integration, according to which understanding is conceived of as a “fusion of horizons”. Art and human sciences converge in being forms of human self-understanding and of disclosure of fundamental aspects of human reality, thereby playing complementary roles in the process of Bildung, a key concept in the German humanist tradition that plays an important role in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics.

Is a rational approach always able to resolve intercultural conflicts about values and morals? The leading questions of this paper deal with the relationship between cultural difference and moral reasoning, the possibility to argue about cultural differences and the possibility of rational grounds for intercultural dialogue. The underlying idea is that a true intercultural attitude needs a serious theoretical and methodological reflection in order to be aware of the limits of understanding and the pitfalls of universalism. In the first part of the paper I will give a general account of cultural difference and why does it matter from a moral point of view. In the second part I will deal with the issue of rationality, arguing for a pluralistic account of reason. Then I will focus on its relation with cultural differences, outlining some features of moral reasoning as intercultural dialogue.