14/11/2018
Metaphilosophy in color
Metaphilosophy is a part of philosophy dealing with issues like “what is philosophy?”, “what do philosophers do?” or “what is the nature of philosophical arguments?”. In brief, it’s focused on inner rules of profession. Some of those issues may be approached from various disciplines such as psychology, sociology of information sciences.
Any profession’s encyclopedia represents its systematic and comprehensive terminology as well as a list of relevant authors. Using methods from data science we’ll present a detailed structure of Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, one of the most influential references. Data show clear editorial layer in 2.054 encyclopedic articles, as well as invisible structure we discovered using complex networks analysis method. Editorial layer is presented using thematic categorization of articles. The hidden structure is based on preferential association and is demonstrated on both thematic as well personal articles. In the light of Collins’ research in the sociology of philosophies, there is a clear need for updated approach in teaching history of philosophy.
10/10/2018
Video games and moral panics
Dirty philosophy is back in volume four! The season opens with a lecture on video-games and moral panics. It’s twentieth anniversary of the Fallout, the cult post-apocalyptic game, and the new sequel is coming soon. Video games are impressive industry today, its revenues overcoming movie and sport industries – combined! Some games have more active players than some European countries have residents. Incomes of some publishers may be compared to budgets of some minor countries. Significant money implies significant media attention. Emergence of moral figures is inevitable. They’re going to recognize in this form of entertainment also dangers for young and naïve minds, blame video games for school shootings, moral decline and incoming collapse of the Western civilization. What arguments do they use, are they any good and how is that related to philosophy you may check on the Wednesday, October 10th at 6 PM at the City library.
27/4/2018
Biograd Public Library lecture
I had terrific opportunity to spread the viruses of both science-fiction and philosophy outside Zadar due to call of couple of my former students Kristina Barbaroša, Sanja Birkić and Tihana Jurišić from Briogad Public Library. As a part of The book night festival, I held a lecture on science fiction and fact, futurology and a bit of research ethics. It was a great experience to be guest in small community library and to interact with Sci-Fi fans of various generations. We had interesting discussion on impact of technology across the lifespan.
19/4/2018
science festival
This year's festival of science theme is a discovery. According to a successful formula, my colleague Mirko Duić and I are doing a double feature in the University Library at New campus. Mirko will present the discovery theme through some classic movies, while I will dedicate to the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. War Wells' 'War of the Worlds' and the challenges that civilizations will meet if aliens are ever to be discovered.
The Halloween of 2018 will make 30 years from the broadcast of the cult radio drama 'The War of the Worlds'. The radio adaptation of the classic novel by Herbert George Wells was directed by the future cult filmmaker, Orson Welles. In the shadow of the upcoming war, the Marsian invasion to the United States sounded quite convincing. The notorious reputation of the adaptation has also helped the news campaign directed against competing media. Discovery of alien life and meeting with it can be a discovery we do not want. Will the space travelers be well-intentioned and enlightened or will we participate live in some of the bad B-movies from the 50s about invasion? In the lecture, we will have the opportunity to become acquainted with some of the classic works of scientific fiction dealing with the first contact, what does it mean for human civilization and what kind of changes will it causes - re-examining politics, philosophy, religion. There will also be presented some interesting empirical research on the perception of the first contact.
12/4/2018
Overcoming obstacles - a workshop for students with disabilites
Student Counseling Service organized another workshop for students with disabilities. Ivana Sučić Šanter and me presented several services that Zadar University provides for students with disabilities such as course Peer support for students with disabilities, assistive technologies, counseling services, teaching adaptation, and accessibility standards. We exchanged good and not-so-good experiences, provided examples of good practice, some historical examples of exceptional persons who also happened to be persons with disabilities and presented in short theoretical framework of disability studies.
This is a part in series of spring workshops provided by Student Counseling Service.
16-18/3/2018
FantaSTikon
Westeros is a stage of political intrigue, brutal conflicts and magic. Along with dragons and white walkers, the philosopher may escape your attention. What could Machiavelli, Hobbes or Plato say about the game of thrones? Who needs moral virtues if your have army large enough? Is it better to have a wise ruler or mediocre democracy? Is a man without religion as a fish without bicycles? Will Danny and John live happily... Okay, we'll skip this last one. No spoilers.
At this year's FantaSTikon I perform with a lecture on philosophy, politics, and non-violent conflict resolution in the Games of the Throne. Along with Ivica Puljak and Zdeslav Benzon, I participate in the round table devoted to Arthur C. Clarke.
Above that, I was elected as honorary member of F&ST society. Thank you.
2/3/2018
professional advancement
May 17th Elected associate professor in philosophy.
March 2nd Elected in scientific title of senior scientific associate.
23/1/2018
Amazon.com announced book 1984 and Philosophy
Amazon.com just announced the book 1984 and Philosophy! The book is edited by Ezio di Nuzzi and Stefan Storrie, published by Open Court. This is 116th title in Popular Culture and Philosophy series. Bruno's and mine chapter deals with issue may one be happy in spite of oppressive environment and how philosophy may help you achieve that - its history and critical thinking skills.
You may preorded the book here. Coming from press in June.
13/12/2017
presenting defragmentations book in Split
With a little help from Split Philosophy Circle of Croatian Philosophical Society I presented the book defragmentations at Philosophy Department of Philosophy Faculty in Split. It is my pleasure to note that the concept of doing philosophy with lot of pictures has been warmly greeted by the audience.
16/11/2017
World Philosophy Day
For upcoming World Philosophy Day, I prepared a lecture on informatization of philosophy and need to make strong bonds with information sciences. Philosophy presents significant literature corpora with numerous authors and concepts, disciplinary branches, and all that spanning for more than 26 centuries. Some junction points of digital humanities and philosophy are presented.
27-30/9/2017
conference Croatian Philosophy in Context and Interaction, Cres
Together with Maja Jadrešin I presented the paper On (in)visibility of Croatian philosophers in encyclopedias. Lecture is dealing with the issue of invisibility of Croatian philosophers in specialized tertiary publications such as philosophical dictionaries and encyclopedias. A couple of printed, digital and on-line encyclopedias and dictionaries in English and German language are analyzed. The results suggest minor representation – with the exception of Frane Petrić and Ruđer Bošković, no other Croatian philosopher has his own article in edited publications. Wikipedia is the exception due to collective contribution. Possible causes and solutions are discussed in the lecture.
18/9/2017
pop-sci lecture My sci-fi, your life
Invited by Renata Fujčić, my high-school teacher of biochemistry, Renata Ruić Funčić, I kept short pop-sci lecture on two masterpieces of science fiction, Herbert's Dune and Asimov's robot cycle. Herbert's story on galactic-religious revolution seems pretty close today presenting challenges of culture contact, boundaries of human development (Huntington meeting posthumanism) and political upheaval due to technological change (weirding ways vs. Internet of things). The second part is about robots and artificial intelligence, a favourite topic by Isaac Asimov since the late 1930s. We'll see how good predictions his stories are about challenges we're about to meet soon with robotics.
4-6/5/2017
conference Formal Methods and Science in Philosophy II, Dubrovnik
Krešimit Zauder and me presented for the first time the results of research on application complex network analysis to philosophial concepts and philospoher's network. We presented some interesting previous research on similar topic. Our approach was different in sample used - we analyzed Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, not Wikipedia, due to more consistent editorial interventions and significant data representation. Encyclopedia contains over two thousand articles written by more than 12000 contributors.
Krešimir's software extracted data from encyclopedia: article titles and types, editorial classification, and incoming and aoutcoming links between philosophers and concepts. I produced several visualizations (for instance, there are almost 5000 links between over 900 philosophers) and did statistical analysis. Results consistently point to similar pattern: distribution is Pareto-like (longtail) whether we are talkig about links about concepts, philosophers, incoming or outcoming links, as well as contributor's work.
28/4/2017
sexuality days
The final lecture on Sexuality Days was held at Psychology Dept. In spite of rain and couple of technical problems, we took a stroll through the history of video-games, and both presence and absence of sexuality.
Geeks and sex, yeah right! How does history of intersections between sexuality and video-games look like? In spite of stereotypes about gamers (pen'n'paper, comoputers and e-sports), sexual content in video-games is present with various degree of covertness and subtlety. To be honest, it's hard to be seductive in CGA graphics, but nudes in ASCII art have been popular once and were the height of erotic-meets-technology trend. As gamers get older, so did transform sexual content: from unlucky Leisure Suit Harry to Second Life avatars, from nude mods to porno-machinima. Since gaming-industry produces higher revenues than Hollywood movies does, all you ever wanted to do (or wanted to be done to you, I don't dispute anyone's taste), even more diverge sexy games are in store.
24/4/2017
festival of science
This year, festival theme is the time. The Room 45 provides triple feature! Mirko Duić and me will have two short lectures, and Jadranka Stojanovski with Nikolina Peša Pavlović are organizing an exhibition on the history of written word.
Mirko held a lecture Time according to the movie gif calendar, where he presented short history of the world using short clips from several cult movies. He started with Kubrick's and Clarke's 2001: A Space Odissey and we wisited in 30 minutes all the important places of the cinema art. Mine half an hour was dedicated to logical paradoxes in time-travel narratives. I pointed out several novels using motif of Wells' time-travel machine, Asimov's time-police, and couple of movies and TV-series like Looper, Quantum Leap and trilogy Back to the Future.
I'm very grateful to Jelena Rušev Mogilveskij for the idea and providing such a lovely space of University library. Thanks goes to Gordana Marčetić for great poster!
18-20/3/2017
FantaSTikon 2017
The third FantaSTikon in Split was held this time in March instead of July and I'm thankful to the organizing committee for trasferring it into more humane time of the year. Three days of lectures, projections, demos, play workshops and accompanying fair were great experience for starting the summer semester. It's a great feeling to see people you once opressed with logic and statistics to bring home such a great project and made a world a better place, for geeks at least. My thanks goes to Romana for calling me to the first con and repeating it this year also.
At Friday an announcement of book Fallout and Philosophy was done, and I was lucky to have a great audience. On Saturday I participated in large sci-pop feature on video-games together with Krešimir Krolo from Zadar University Sociology Dept. He presented the results of the large study on gamers in Croatia. I presented results of two small-scale studies made with Domagoj Volarević, Lucija Mrkela, Tea Šango and Tomislav Rajković for the Bobcatsss conferences in 2015 and 2017. Our results showed some similiraties with Krolo's large study, and confirmed all the misplacement of spectacular media reports on gaming and addiction, induced violence, and moral panic in general.
22/11/2016
World Philosophy Day: Who's scared of the Bomb?
World Philosophy Day is UNESCO's Chair of Philosophy manifestation initiated in 2012. In Croatia, we started with activities in 2013 in Zadar, then in other cities. Zadar Philosophy Circle traditionaly helds lectures on popular philosophy and science.
This year the theme is fear. Fear is deep, visceral emotion that may serve as strong action motivator or may trigger escape behavior. We may look at the fear from the psychological perspectie, as one of the emotions; from the phenomenological perspective, as overwhelming experience that may be marking of importan life events; from the sociological perspective, observing how society models emotion learning and expression; and finally from the cognitive science perspective, using the neuroscience findings.
When world bipolarity crumbled in late 1980s media coverage of fear related to nuclear weapond themes deminished. Some thirty years later we havethe opportunity to listen the news about dropping nuclear disarmament treaties, building of huge nuclear shelters, induced fear and bogus promises on security and protection from atomic weapons. History repeats itself ironically and Frankfurt's bullshit this time glows in the dark!
The lecure will be held on Thursday, November 22nd at Room 119 at New Campus of Zadar Univeristy.
15/10/2016
RiKon 2016.
This year RiKon, Rijeka convention of science fiction and fantasy was held at the Faculty of Humanities (Trsat Campus). As great cons go, you could find many interesting lectures and worskhops, new game presentations, small fair and a cosplay contest. After longer absence from cons, I announced book Fallout and Philosophy, and held a lecture on Jungian archetypes in science fiction and horror movies.
14/6/2016
Boris Bosančić book promotion
At the Slavistic Dept. library Boris Bosančić's book 'Blue ostrige' was promoted. Boris is assistant professor at Osijek University LIS Dept. Promotion was lead by Mirta Matošić and Dora Rubinić, and a short talk about book was given by Boris Badurina and myself. Boris Bosančić thus presented himself to Zadar audience as author of philosophical novel about information
The 'Blue Ostrige' book is not a page-turner, you're not going to binge-read it, but you're going to loose your breath when you think about what was written. We're in the middle of the information revolution, and are going toward the fourth industrial revolution based on information management. What's going to happen after that? What is the information? Does it form the world, like Pythagorean numbers do? And what happens when mataphors go for a walk?
If this sounds like too many questions for a decent novel, well you're dead wrong! Boris did a great job mixing fantas genre, his information sciences expertise, issues in philosophy of information and made a creative narrative. Lot of us professional philosophers write very intelectual (and hard to read) books, but to join philosophy with a fantastic story, that's an achievement only a few may pull.
19/5/2016
lecture revisited: Iron Maiden: an invitation to read due to audience interest
I experienced a miracle! - due to large audience interest about inpure philosophy and Iron Maiden I had to repeat the lecture. Library hall was filled again, headbangers showed they have a sense of humor, and I received lot of motivational comments in later hanging out with the parts of the audience.
It started with Henry Rollins stand up on Iron Maiden fans and there was a lot of (self)recognition :-) The followed a short history of the New vawe of the British heavy-metal. Starting with their first album Iron Maiden until the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son lyricy and pop-culture references were analyzed. We could see why you could consider The Piece of Mind as a tribute album to cult movies and books (like Herert's Dune or the motif of Icarus) and why true headbangers need to re read well to understand their favorite Maiden songs.
31/5/2016
Maja Jadrešin PhD thesis defense
At University's Main Hall, Maja Jadrešin defended her PhD thesis Academic Publishing: Ethical Aspects of the Copyright in front of committee: Nives Tomašević, assistant professor, Srećko Jelušić, full professor (retired) and Hrvoje Jurić, assistant professor. In that process, a nervous mentor became very proud one.
17-19/7/2015
the first FantaSTikon!
During the hottest weekend in 2015 the very first convention of science-fiction and fantasy was held in Split. A member of the organizing committee was Romana Jadrijević, my former student, so accepting the invitation was a way to compensate for all the traumas I caused her during lectures of logic and statistics.
I held a lecture on robots and sexuality, presented results of a survey Defining genres of science-fiction and fantasy. We planned a demo of World of Darkness RPG placed during the fourth Crusade in Zadar. The lecture was set in humorous atmosfere, with some of the most famous cases of falling in love, lusting for and marrying with machines, computer and/or robots, and ended with certaing projections how could it look in the recent future. Survey results presentation lasted longer than planned due to lively discussion on genre boundaries (i.e. who's more metal).