Publications
I’m very pleased to announce a new publication on New Ideas in Psychology entitled: Aesthetic perception: A naturalistic turn with co-author Argyris Arnellos.
Arnellos, A., & Xenakis, I. (2017). Aesthetic perception: A naturalistic turn. New Ideas in Psychology. doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2017.06.002
Publications
Sustainable interpersonal service relationships (SISR) are the outcome of a design process that supports situated meaningful interactions between those being served and those in service. Service design is not just directed to simply satisfy the ability to perceive the psychological state of others, but more importantly, it should aim at preserving these relationships in relation to the contextual requirements that they functionally need, in order to be or remain sustainable. However, SISRs are uncertain since they have many possibilities to be in error in the sense that the constructed, situated meanings may finally be proven unsuccessful for the anticipations and the goals of those people engaged in a SISR. The endeavor of this paper is ….
for more see
Xenakis, I. (2018). Reducing uncertainty in sustainable interpersonal service relationships: the role of aesthetics. Cognitive Processing, 19(2), 215–229. doi:10.1007/s10339-017-0819-4
Publications
Following a naturalist-realist point of view, this paper attempts to contribute to the metaphysical question of whether or not reality includes aesthetics. During evolution, cognitive agents have constructed (goal-directed) regulatory abilities forming anticipatory contents in the form of feelings regarding opportunities for interaction. These feelings are considered to be the fundamental part of an evaluative or (what in this paper considered as aesthetic) behavior through which agents show a preference to aspects of their external world. Thus, ‘aesthetic’ denotes an agential behavior based on an organization of processes integrated in a form that identifies, evaluates, and compares sources of interaction-success or error in specific aspects of external reality. While agents approach the same aspects of reality as they all interact with the same world, our claim is that aesthetic normativity cannot be an objective feature of this reality. This model overcomes problems of correspondence in the sense that an agent’s actions and thoughts ought to react to any pre-given (aesthetic) quality or norm, while at the same time it emphasizes the self-directedness of aesthetic behavior that enables the development of creative forms of cognition.
Xenakis, I., & Arnellos, A. (2017). Aesthetics as evaluative forms of agency to perceive and design reality: a reply to aesthetic realism. New Ideas in Psychology, in press. doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2017.03.014
Distinctions
The editors of Design Studies has just informed us that our paper, “The relation between interaction aesthetics and affordances”, published in 2013 was one of the most highly cited papers during 2014, 2015 and up until June 2016. They have designed a certificate that acknowledges our achievement.
Many thanks to the Editors and Publishers of Design Studies.
Conferences
In the 4th Hellenic Conference in Philosophy of Science are involved more than 100 speakers from Greece and the international academic community in the following areas: general philosophy of science and philosophy specific sciences (philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology and biomedical sciences , philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of technology), philosophy of language and metaphysics of science, ancient philosophy and science, history and philosophy of science.
Accepting the opportunity I presented my latest work on aesthetic science entitled “Aesthetic science: towards a naturalized model of aesthetics”. My main endeavor there was to propose realistic organizational requirements towards a naturalized explanation of aesthetics. Approaching the problem from within the living system I seek for the minimal process relationships that are required for the emergence, from primitive to higher levels, of aesthetic behavior.
Great conference, great atmosphere, great people.
Many thanks to the amazing organizers.
Conferences
The Interactivist Summer Institute is dedicated to exploring the frontiers of understanding of life, mind, and cognition. There is a growing recognition – across many disciplines – that phenomena of life and mind, including cognition and representation, are emergents of far-from-equilibrium, interactive, autonomous systems. In such a view, mind and biology, mind and agent, are re-united. The classical treatment of cognition and representation within a formalist framework of encodingist assumptions is increasingly recognized as a fruitless maze of blind alleys. From neurobiology to robotics, from cognitive science to philosophy of mind and language, dynamic and interactive alternatives are being explored.
Accepting the opportunity we presented our latest work on perception and emotions entitled “Feelings and the construction of perceptual content”. Our main argument is that feelings do not only play an important role in the reduction of interactive uncertainty but they also have an active role in the construction of the perceptual content itself facilitating the emergence of the representational content.
Great conference, great atmosphere, great people.
Many thanks to the amazing organizers.
Publications
Nowadays, aesthetics are generally considered as a crucial aspect that affects the way we confront things, events, and states of affairs. However, the functional role of aesthetics in the interaction between agent and environment has not been addressed effectively. Our objective here is to provide an explanation concerning the role of aesthetics, and especially, of the aesthetic experience as a fundamental bodily and emotional activity in the respective interactions. An explanation of the functional role of the aesthetic experience could offer new orientations to our understanding of embodied cognition and of aesthetics as a fundamental part of it. We argue that aesthetic experience, especially its emotional dimension, is an evaluative process that influences the anticipation for stable and successful interactions with the environment. In other words, aesthetics facilitates sense-making as they affect what might be anticipated by an action tendency with respect to an environment.
Citation: Xenakis, I., & Arnellos, A. (2015). Aesthetics as an Emotional Activity That Facilitates Sense-Making: Towards an Enactive Approach to Aesthetic Experience. In A. Scarinzi (Ed.), Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy (pp. 245–259). Springer Netherlands. doi 10.1007/978-94-017-9379-7_15
Publications
I’m very pleased to announce a new publication on Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology of Frontiers in Psychology entitled: Aesthetic perception and its minimal content: a naturalistic perspective with my colleague Arnellos Argyris.
Aesthetic perception is one of the most interesting topics for philosophers and scientists who investigate how it influences our interactions with objects and states of affairs. Over the last few years, several studies have attempted to determine “how aesthetics is represented in an object,” and how a specific feature of an object could evoke the respective feelings during perception. Despite the vast number of approaches and models, we believe that these explanations do not resolve the problem concerning the conditions under which aesthetic perception occurs, and what constitutes the content of these perceptions. Adopting a naturalistic perspective, we here view aesthetic perception as a normative process that enables agents to enhance their interactions with physical and socio-cultural environments. Considering perception as an anticipatory and preparatory process of detection and evaluation of indications of potential interactions (what we call ‘interactive affordances’), we argue that the minimal content of aesthetic perception is an emotionally valued indication of interaction potentiality. Aesthetic perception allows an agent to normatively anticipate interaction potentialities, thus increasing sense making and reducing the uncertainty of interaction. This conception of aesthetic perception is compatible with contemporary evidence from neuroscience, experimental aesthetics, and interaction design. The proposed model overcomes several problems of transcendental, art-centered, and objective aesthetics as it offers an alternative to the idea of aesthetic objects that carry inherent values by explaining ‘the aesthetic’ as emergent in perception within a context of uncertain interaction.
Keywords: aesthetic perception, Emotions, anticipation, perceptual content, interactive affordance, agency, normativity
Citation: Xenakis I and Arnellos A (2014). Aesthetic perception and its minimal content: a naturalistic perspective. Front. Psychol. 5:1038. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01038
Distinctions
Our paper named “The relation between interaction aesthetics and affordances” published in Design Studies has been shortlisted for the annual Design Studies Award.
The Design Research Society and Elsevier make an Award for the best paper published each year in Design Studies.
The criteria for the Award are as follows, in order of priority:
Here you can see the winners of the 2013 Design Studies Award
Distinctions
Our paper “The relation between interaction aesthetics and affordances” was the 5th top hottest in Design Studies 6 months after its publication (from January to March 2013).
