Abstract
Even though aesthetics in the fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and interaction design are mostly considered as an emotional or an affective component of human behavior, it is still not clear what is the origin and the role of an aesthetic emotion, how it is elicited and why or how it influences our behavior when we interact with artifacts. What it is proposed in this dissertation is a naturalized conception of aesthetic emotions that emerge in interactive uncertainty as normative functions, which are available to the agent in order to assign values to the dynamic presuppositions of interaction. These values influence the anticipatory system of the agent aiding the fulfillment of his goal. Aesthetic values are considered as functional indications that strengthen or weaken the anticipation for the resolution of the dynamic uncertainty emerged in the specific interaction. Such values are proposed to lead to problem-solving mechanisms, which help the agent to reconstruct new ...
Even though aesthetics in the fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and interaction design are mostly considered as an emotional or an affective component of human behavior, it is still not clear what is the origin and the role of an aesthetic emotion, how it is elicited and why or how it influences our behavior when we interact with artifacts. What it is proposed in this dissertation is a naturalized conception of aesthetic emotions that emerge in interactive uncertainty as normative functions, which are available to the agent in order to assign values to the dynamic presuppositions of interaction. These values influence the anticipatory system of the agent aiding the fulfillment of his goal. Aesthetic values are considered as functional indications that strengthen or weaken the anticipation for the resolution of the dynamic uncertainty emerged in the specific interaction. Such values are proposed to lead to problem-solving mechanisms, which help the agent to reconstruct new interactive plans. This means that aesthetic emotions influence the process of action selection through which the agent forms such interactive anticipations that come from those tendencies to act. Therefore, the aesthetic emotions affect the dynamic and flexible action patterns of the agent, namely, its emergent representations and aesthetic meanings.Particularly, it is proposed that:•The aesthetic experience and the respective aesthetic meaning are functionally related to the outcome of aesthetic emotions as the agent detects future interactive potentialities.•Aesthetic emotions and thus aesthetic experience function as a signal mechanism, which detects those differentiations (changes) of the environmental conditions and warns the agent for possible failures of those conditions. These signaling devices, according to neurological evidence are already located in the agent’s structure and they are available by the agent when the respective internal or external conditions call them.•When the conditions are proper, the agent selects among others the available biological function (signal devices) in order to appraise a particular situation that exhibits interactive uncertainty.•This infrastructure aids the construction of neural patterns, which results also in aesthetically-oriented emotional responses (of pleasure and pain) that influence the development of the respective aesthetic meaning.•This appraisal process emerges an aesthetically-oriented emotional value signaling the agent to anticipate or not a goal success. However, all aesthetic values (pleasure and pain) are based on the emergence of a primitive kind of truth value.•Therefore, every aesthetic value and by extension every aesthetic emotion and meaning, could fail in the course of action. This means that the agent will finally fail to contribute to his (far from equilibrium) stability.
show more
