Dr. Alkis (Alkiviadis) Gounaris was born in Athens, Greece. He teaches philosophy in postgraduate and lifelong learning programs. His areas of expertise are the Philosophy of Human Cognition and Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, Ethics, Metaethics and Applied Ethics.

He studied Sports Sciences and then Philosophy at the University of Athens. From the same University he earned a master’s degree in Ethics and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Mind under the supervision of Prof. Theodosis Pelegrinis. His Ph.D thesis, titled "Intentionality and the Emergence of Meaning" attempts a naturalistic approach to the human cognition, combining classical phenomenological theories with contemporary theories of emergence. According to this hypothesis, the cognitive procedure that we use to call “the meaning”, is an emergent property of a certain system that includes each thinking subject together with its world.

He is a research fellow of The NKUA Applied Philosophy Research Lab and a member of the PPE Lab of the University of Athens.

Along with his academic career, he trained and specialized in publishing, marketing, business and communication, fields in which he worked for several years. Since 1988 he had been working for Greek and multinational companies (Athens, Antwerp and London) in media, advertising and business consulting.

Today, besides his academic duties he writes scripts and he is a research consultant in documentary films. In 2011 his documentary titled “Only Words Continue” won the Grand Fipresci Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. In 2015 his documentary about mental health titled “Ψ-Psy” was an official selection of the Berlin Filmbox Festival.

ORCID iD 0000-0002-0494-6413