Argyris Arnellos

Universal access to information services—the need for user information and its relationship to device profiles

Users access information services with a variety of devices and with different interaction modes that depend on personal characteristics (including disabilities) and on the context of usage. With the appearance of mobile devices, the industry has focused its efforts on the standardization of device characteristics, thus giving to information providers some content adaptation facilities. However, little attention has been paid to the standardization of user profiles that will allow further customization and adaptation capabilities in mainstream services. This paper will present the authors’ experiences in outlining and implementing user profiles, as well as possible integration paths with device characteristics.

Aesthetic perception and its minimal content: a naturalistic perspective

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.

Anticipatory Functions, Digital-Analog Forms and Biosemiotics: Integrating the Tools to Model Information and Normativity in Autonomous Biological Agents

We argue that living systems process information such that functionality emerges in them on a continuous basis. We then provide a framework that can explain and model the normativity of biological functionality. In addition we offer an explanation of the anticipatory nature of functionality within our overall approach. We adopt a Peircean approach to Biosemiotics, and a dynamical approach to Digital-Analog relations and to the interplay between different levels of functionality in autonomous systems, taking an integrative approach. We then apply the underlying biosemiotic logic to a particular biological system, giving a model of the B-Cell Receptor signaling system, in order to demonstrate how biosemiotic concepts can be used to build an account of biological information and functionality. Next we show how this framework can be used to explain and model more complex aspects of biological normativity, for example, how cross-talk between different signaling pathways can be avoided. Overall, we describe an integrated theoretical framework for the emergence of normative functions and, consequently, for the way information is transduced across several interconnected organizational levels in an autonomous system, and we demonstrate how this can be applied in real biological phenomena. Our aim is to open the way towards realistic tools for the modeling of information and normativity in autonomous biological agents.

Cybernetic embodiment and the role of autonomy in the design process

Purpose – This paper aims to develop the role of autonomy in the emergence of the design process. It shows how the design process is facilitated by autonomy, how autonomy is enhanced through the design process and how the emergence of anticipatory and future‐oriented representational content in an autonomous cognitive system provides the functionality needed for the strengthening of both its autonomy and the design process, in which the autonomous cognitive system purposefully engages.Design/methodology/approach – Initially, the essential characteristics of the design process and of the cognitive systems participating in it will be identified. Then, an attempt to demonstrate the ability of an enhanced second‐order cybernetic framework to satisfy these characteristics will be made. Next, an analytic description of the design process under this framework is presented and the respective implications are critically discussed.Findings – The role of autonomy is crucial for the design process, as it seems that a...

Aesthetics as an Emotional Activity That Facilitates Sense-Making: Towards an Enactive Approach to Aesthetic Experience

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.

The animal sensorimotor organization: a challenge for the environmental complexity thesis

Godfrey-Smith’s environmental complexity thesis (ECT) is most often applied to multicellular animals and the complexity of their macroscopic environments to explain how cognition evolved. We think that the ECT may be less suited to explain the origins of the animal bodily organization, including this organization’s potentiality for dealing with complex macroscopic environments. We argue that acquiring the fundamental sensorimotor features of the animal body may be better explained as a consequence of dealing with internal bodily—rather than environmental complexity. To press and elucidate this option, we develop the notion of an animal sensorimotor organization (ASMO) that derives from an internal coordination account for the evolution of early nervous systems. The ASMO notion is a reply to the question how a collection of single cells can become integrated such that the resulting multicellular organization becomes sensitive to and can manipulate macroscopic features of both the animal body and its environment. In this account, epithelial contractile tissues play the central role in the organization behind complex animal bodies. In this paper, we relate the ASMO concept to recent work on epithelia, which provides empirical evidence that supports central assumptions behind the ASMO notion. Second, we discuss to what extent the notion applies to basic animal architectures, exemplified by sponges and jellyfish. We conclude that the features exhibited by the ASMO are plausibly explained by internal constraints acting on and within this multicellular organization, providing a challenge for the role the ECT plays in this context.

Autonomy in Virtual Agents: Integrating Perception and Action on Functionally Grounded Representations

Autonomy is a fundamental property for an intelligent virtual agent. The problem in the design of an autonomous IVA is that the respective models approach the interactive, environmental and representational aspects of the agent as separate to each other, while the situation in biological agents is quite different. A theoretical framework indicating the fundamental properties and characteristics of an autonomous biological agent is briefly presented and the interactivist model of representations combined with the concept of a semiotic process are used as a way to provide a detailed architecture of an autonomous agent and its fundamental characteristics. A part of the architecture is implemented as a case study and the results are critically discussed showing that such architecture may provide grounded representational structures, while issues of scaling are more difficult to be tackled.

Fair digital signing: The structural reliability of signed documents

The exchange of digitally signed data inherits all the problems related to the indeterminacy of human communication, which are further intensified by the legal implications of signing. One of the fundamental intrinsic weaknesses of digital signatures is that the signer creates a signature on a series of bits, which may be differently transformed and perceived by the verifier (or relying party), due to the inevitable differences in the intention and the purpose of the two agents. As a result, syntactic and semantic distance is introduced between a signer and a relying party. In this paper we suggest a framework that models the process of digital signing, using several virtual and interrelated levels of communication, thereby promoting the analytic and synthetic exploration of the entities and the transformations involved. Based on this exploration, it is possible to indicate the favorable conditions for mutual understanding between the signer and the relying party. We focus on the syntactic and presentation levels of the communication process and we introduce the notion of structural reliability of a syntactic component, as a measure of how securely and accurately a signed document can be used. It is argued that structural reliability depends on a quantitative metric, such as the structural informativeness along with other qualitative characteristics of the syntactic component. The structural reliability of several document representation protocols is evaluated and it is concluded that the higher the informativeness of the protocol, the less the semantic distance produced, provided that the communicating parties have the capacity to handle this protocol.

Towards representational autonomy of agents in artificial environments

Autonomy is a crucial property of an artificial agent. The type of representational structures and the role they play in the preservation of an agents autonomy are pointed out. A framework of self-organised Peircean semiotic processes is introduced and it is then used to demonstrate the emergence of grounded representational structures in agents interacting with their environment.

The Emergence of Autonomous Representations in Artificial Agents

Representational autonomy is a key property of an artificial agent. The type of representational structures and the role they play in the preservation of an agent’s autonomy are pointed out. The limitations of the traditional cognitivist approach and of the embodied intelligent approach to support such representational structures are described and indicated. A framework of self-organising Peircean semiotic processes is introduced and it is then applied to demonstrate the emergence of autonomous representations in an artificial agent interacting with the environment.