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
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.
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
Publications
Aesthetic experience, as a cognitive activity is a fundamental part of the interaction process in which an agent attempts to interpret his/her environment in order to support the fundamental process of decision making. Proposing a four-level interactive model, we underline and indicate the functions that provide the operations of aesthetic experience and, by extension, of aesthetic judgment. Particularly in this paper, we suggest an integration of the fundamental Peircean semiotic parameters and their related levels of semiotic organization with the proposed model. Our aim is to provide a further theoretical understanding with respect to the perception of aesthetics and to enrich our models regarding the functionality of aesthetic interpretation, using the theoretical interpretive richness provided by the semiotic perspective.
Xenakis I., Arnellos A., Spyrou T. & Darzentas J.(2012). Modelling Aesthetic Judgment: An Interactive-semiotic Perspective. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 19(3), 25–51
Conferences
The conference theme is “Out of Control” hosted by the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design (CSM)
For a number of years, uncertainty, crisis and chaos have been keywords describing the experience of many of us. A world driven by uncertainty, crisis and chaos demands different responses from design (as a community, a practice and a process). On one hand we can mitigate against these designing systems which can withstand, or manage, the challenges they produce. Here there is a focus upon design as a “problem-solving” activity. On the other, we can use them as springboards to a creative future. In this way, design as “opportunity mapping” becomes important.
Accepting this opportunity we presented our latest work on aesthetic experiepnce and design entitled “Reducing Uncertainty in the Design Process: the Role of Aesthetics” . Providing an explanation for the general role of aesthetics in interaction, we suggested that aesthetics through their emotional dimension (aesthetic emotions) are implicitly associated with the design process by inducing the reduction of design-uncertainty. From our perspective aesthetics are about action. They are a fundamental aspect of design that enhances the communication between the design-participants by promoting the achievements of goals in the design process.
Great conference, great atmosphere, great people.
Many thanks to the amazing organizers/ host.