Greg Detre
Friday, 01 December, 2000
Bergson (1900), Laughter
Kolakowski, Bergson
Routledge, �Humour�, by Jerrold Levinson
John McCrone, �Comic relief�, in New Scientist
Alison Motluk, �Getting the joke�, in New Scientist
Robert Provine, Laughter
Minsky, �Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious�
Oxford companion to the mind, �Humour�
Plato (355BC), Philebus
Bergson, H.-L. (1899) Le rire: essai sur la signification du comique, Paris; trans. �Laughter�, in W. Sypher (ed.) Comedy, Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1956.(The most fecund and imaginative of traditional theories of humour, combining elements of the superiority and incongruity traditions, and paying special attention to the social dimensions and purposes of humour.)
Carroll, N. (1991) �On Jokes�, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 16: 280-301. (Criticizes Freud�s account of jokes and proposes an alternative account in terms of puzzle-solving.)
Clark, M. (1970) �Humour and Incongruity�, Philosophy 45: 20-32.(A seminal essay that analyses humour as involving the enjoyment of perceived incongruity for its own sake.)
Cohen, T. (1983) �Jokes�, in E. Schaper (ed.) Pleasure, Preference, and Value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 120-36. (Explores some of the presuppositions and implications, including ethical ones, of making and enjoying jokes.)
Dauer, F.W. (1988) �The Picture as the Medium of Humorous Incongruity�, American Philosophical Quarterly 25: 241-51.(Argues that pictures, not propositions, are the fundamental vehicle of humour.)
Freud, S. (1905) Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Leipzig/Vienna: Dueticke; trans. J. Strachey, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956.(Presents an elaborate categorization of jokes and a unified account of their functioning, with the pleasure of all jokes based on an economy of psychic energy.)
Hartz, G. (1991) �Humor: The Beauty and the Beast�, American Philosophical Quarterly 28: 299-309.(Argues that humour is a special sort of emotion, akin to aesthetic emotions.)
Kant, I. (1790) Kritik der Urteilskraft, Berlin: Lagarde; trans. J.H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, New York: Hafner, 1951.(Kant offers a compressed, though suggestive, proposal along incongruity lines, seeing the essence of humour in a sudden deflation of expectation.)
Kierkegaard, S.A. (1846) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D.F. Swenson, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941.(A particular version of incongruity theory, relating issues about humour to the demarcation of the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious.)
Koestler, A. (1964) The Act of Creation, New York: Macmillan.(Perhaps the most sophisticated recent form of incongruity theory, coupled with elements of relief theory.)
Kulka, T. (1990) �The Incongruity of Incongruity Theories of Humour�, IYYUN, The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 39: 223-35. (Argues that humour derives from resolution of incongruity, as opposed to incongruity itself.)
LaFollette, H. and Shanks, N. (1993) �Belief and the Basis of Humor�, American Philosophical Quarterly, 30: 329-39. (Relates the problem of humour to others more central in current philosophy.)
McGhee, P. (1979) Humor: Its Origin and Development, San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman. (A comprehensive survey of its questions by a leading psychologist of humour.)
Martin, M.W. (1983) �Humour and the Aesthetic Enjoyment of Incongruities�, British Journal of Aesthetics 23: 74-84. (Argues that enjoyment of perceived incongruity for its own sake is insufficient for humorous amusement.)
Monro, D.H. (1951) The Argument of Laughter, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. (Comprehensive classification and survey of theories of humour.)
Morreall, J.
(1983) Taking Laughter Seriously, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. (Monograph by the most prominent contemporary philosophical writer on humour, which explains laughter as the result of a pleasant psychological shift.)
(1983) �Humor and Emotion�, American Philosophical Quarterly, 20: 297-304. (Argues that amusement is not usefully categorized as an emotion, but should be contrasted with it.)
(1989) �Enjoying Incongruity�, Humor, 2: 1-18. (Explores evolutionary reasons for the development of the sense of humour in humans.)
Mulkay, M. (1988) On Humour, Oxford: Blackwell. (General survey of the topic from a sociological point of view.)
Raskin, V. (1985) Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Dordrecht: Reidel. (An impressive treatise bringing to bear insights from linguistics and communication theory.)
Santayana, G. (1896) The Sense of Beauty, New York: Charles Scribner�s Sons. (Offers criticisms both of incongruity and superiority theories.)
Schopenhauer, A. (1819, 1844) Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vols 1 and 2, Leipzig: Brockhaus; trans. E.F.J. Payne, The World as Will and Representation, vols 1 and 2, New York: Dover, 1966. (An early and influential formulation of incongruity theory, which sees humorous incongruity as invariably rooted in the discrepancy between the concreteness of percepts and the abstractness of concepts.)
Scruton, R. (1982) �Laughter�, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 56: 197-212. (Questions whether humour necessarily focuses on incongruity, stressing instead its devaluational or demolitional aspect.)
Sousa, R. de (1987) The Rationality of Emotion, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.(�11 explores the ethics of �dark� humour and laughter.)
Spencer, H. (1911) �The Physiology of Laughter�, in Essays on Education, Etc., London: Dent. (Formulation of the relief theory, in terms of �mental hydraulics�.)
Swabey, M. (1961) Comic Laughter, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Defends an incongruity account of humour of broad scope.)
Freud (1905), Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Ubewussen
Freud (1928), �Humour�, International journal of psychoanalysis
Kant (1790), Kritik der Urteilskraft
Keith-Spiegel, P (1972), �Early conceptions of humor:
varieties and issues�, in Goldstein and McGhee (eds), The psychology of
humour
La Fave (1977), �Ethnic humour: from paradoxes towards principles�, in Chapman and Foot (eds), It�s a funny thing, humour
Ludovici (1932), The secret of laughter
McGhee (1979), Humor: its origin and development
Pien and Rothbart (1980), �Incongruity humour, play and
self-regulation of arousal in young children�, in McGhee and Chapman (eds), Children�s
humour
Rothbart (1976), �Incongruity, problem-solving and
laughter�, in Chpman and Foot (eds), Humour and laughter: theory, research
and applications
Schopenhauer (1819), The world as will and representation
Spencer (1860), �The physiology of laughter�, Macmillan�s magazine, 1, 395-402
Zillmann (1983), �Disparagement humor�, in McGhee and
Goldstein, Handbook of humor research
Bergson argues that all the
varieties of objects and situations which provoke laughter � whether
deliberately produced, as in comdedies and jokes, or arising unintentionally in
daily life � can be ultimately reduced to a type of human behaviour which displays
the characteristics of mechanical movement (Kolakowski, pg 66)
The comic is that side of a
person in which he resembles a thing; it is that aspect of human events which,
by a special kind of rigidity, imitates a mechanism pure and simple, an automatism,
a lifeless movement. It thus expresses an individual or collective imperfection
which calls for immediate correction. Laughter is this very corrective.
(Laughter, pp 66-7)
Laughter is normally
associated with emotional insensibility; the comic side of events or words is
addressed only to our intelligence, not to our feelings. If we laught at a
person who, in trying to sit down on a chair, lands on the floor, this is
because the flexibility and purposefulness of human acts are suddenly replaced
by mechanical forces. Various human vices become ridiculuous in a comedy as a
result of their automatic character, their lack of elasticity, and the
inability of a person to adapt himself to the human environment. Life does not
repeat itself: a living person repeating himself behaves like a machine and
thereby provokes laughter. A law or regulation might become comical if it is
applied with a rigid consistency. A tragic hero becomes comical when he sits
down in the middle of a high-flown speech: we suddenly realise that he has a
body, and if body prevails over soul, the effect is similar to the contrast
that emerges whena mechanism is substituted for the human body. When Moli��s
physician declares that it is better to die in accordance with medical rules
than to be cured despite them, he makes us laugh because of professional
automatism he displays. If a person gives the impression of being a thing, he
is bound to become ridiculous. Repetitiveness is a favourite trick in comedies:
when Moli��s Harpagon, confronted with many arguments against marrying his
daughter to a man does not love, repeats obstinately �without a dowry!�, he is
comica; as is orgon, repeating his question, �and what about Tartuff?� when
informed of his wife�s illness. They produce the effect of a toy in which a
figure, attached to a string, jumps out, no matter how hard we try to keep it
in its place. If an apparently human act turns out to result from mechanical
causes, we react with laughter. The plot in many comedies consists in the fact
that the same situation occurs repeatedly in different circumstances, or is
reversed. Repeatability and reversibility are the characteristics of a machine:
in human actions, they make us laugh. Distraction is notoriously comical
because it represents the loss of human ability to adjust to changes. Virtue
becomes ridiculous if it is rigid (like the misanthrope�s veracity) and reveals
the person� unsociability. Other examples are provided by people who are
incapable of adjusting their ideas to reality: Don Quixote makes us laugh when
he moulds his perceptions according to a preconceived idea and sees giants
instead of windmills because it is giants that he needs.
When mechanically acting
forces are inserted into a chain of human actions, they reveal the incompatability
of social and human life with the characteristics of an automaton. Laughter is
a corrective reaction of the human intelligence, reason�s resistance to the
confusion of the human with the mechanical, a reassertion of humanity.
Bergson believed the universe to be under the guidance of a creative and loving Person, a super-consciousness directing the course of evolution in beyond Darwinian terms, which he termed �n (an intuitively perceived life- force in Bergson�s philosophy; any mysterious life-force, esp. one supposed to have caused the variations from which new species have emerged.)
The central idea of Bergson�s
cosmology is this: the Whole is of the same nature as myself. The
time-generating lfie of the consciousness is the model for the universe. Our
inner experience of time is the most irresistible fact we encounter. We should
start with the real stream of conscious life, after dispensing with the
�geometrical� prejudices of psychology and physics (Bergson�s is not a
psychological approach: psychology is a natural science with has taken its
rules from more developed areas, and is bound to objectify the mind and to
impose on it the abstract figment of physical time, a derivative of spatial
imagination). How do I perform this leap from myself to the universe? By
intuition, presumably, by trying to coincide with the great pulse of life.
Intuition, however, admittedly cannot have equivalents int eh analytical effort
and is not properly translatable into reational categories. perhaps it delivers
us truth after all, but if so, its truth is beyond the scope of language. It is
in keeping with Bergson�s philosophy to say that our Platonic prejudices have
deeper roots than the restrictions of modern science: they are inherent in
language itself. our language is of course historically relative: no word may
claim to reflect the world as it is in itself, but it is the tool we have at
our disposal. It is therefore unlikely that it could reach absolute reality,
divine or otherwise.
for something to be humorous is for it to be disposed to elicit mirth
in appropriate people through their awareness or cognition of it, and not for
ulterior reasons.
The three leading ideas in
philosophical theories of humour are those of incongruity, superiority and
relief or release
something is funny if it in
itself pleases
appropriate people through being grasped, where the pleasure is of the sort
that leads, though not inevitably, to laughter
makes a confusing distinction between conceptual elucidation and causal explanation
objective vs subjective questions: �what is it for something to be humorous?� vs �what is it for someone to find something humorous?�
The hallmark of incongruity
theory is that it locates the humorous in some incongruity presented by or
perceived in some item. The humorous item may be itself incongruous, relative
to some assumed other object, or it may involve or contain incongruity. There
have been various interpretations of the incongruity of items or elements,
ranging from logical impossibility or paradoxicality, to absurdity and
irrelevance, to unexpectedness and general inappropriateness. Incongruity
theorists include Schopenhauer, Hazlitt, Kierkegaard, A. Koestler, D.H. Monro
and perhaps Kant.
Kant: �the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing� (1790)
Schopenhauer: the essence of the ludicrous, he claimed, lies in the incongruity between concepts, the vehicles of abstract thought, and concrete objects, apprehended in perception, when the incongruity is grasped of a sudden. The mismatch of thought and perception can appear from either of two directions: a single concept can be applied to two very different objects, which only awkwardly encompasses them both (�wit�), or two objects originally ranged under a given concept can be subsequently realized to be fundamentally disparate (�folly�)
Koestler: double association of an item in respect of two different and incompatible reference frames or interpretive matrices at once.
Modern incongruity theorists regard incongruity as necessary, but not sufficient for humour.
Superiority theorists, who include Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Alexander Bain and Henri Bergson (�6), construe humour as rooted in the subject�s awareness of superiority, in some respect, to the humorous object.
Hobbes: humorous laughter is �sudden glory� in one�s eminence or fortune, in contrast with another or one�s former self.
Bergson (1899): comic as essentially �the encrustation of the mechanical on the living� - a falling-off from the human ideal of flexibility, suppleness and accommodation. The observer of this, for Bergson, accordingly feels superior, takes pleasure in so feeling, and manifests their pleasure naturally in laughter at the imperfectly human. Comedy and emotion are held to be incompatible, since comic engagement by its very nature short-circuits emotional involvement. In addition,Bergson maintains that comic laughter is a social corrective that chastises and hopefully reforms the socially undesirable rigid behaviour at which it is directed.
Spencer and Freud, the most
well-known relief theorists, locate the essence of the humorous in the relief
from psychic constraint or the release of accumulated mental energy that it
affords (see Freud �4).
Spencer (1911): it�s
important to investigate not only the features of humour, but why it is
specifically laughter that humour induces, thus necessitating a physiological
explanation. The explanation he offers emphasizes nervous tension and its
bodily manifestation when suddenly excessive or redundant.
Freud (1905): extensive
typology of jokes in terms of their structures and techniques. He viewed the
enjoyment of jokes as rooted in an economy of psychic energy, namely, that of
inhibition or repression. With innocent jokes, the inhibition is against
nonsense and pure play, while with tendentious jokes, the inhibition is against
a display of aggression or sexuality, but in both cases the energy of
inhibition thus freed up manifests itself as pleasure.
Pretty much all of the major theorists could be re-classified.
A number of considerations must be borne in mind when formulating an
adequate analysis of humour, that is, an answer to the question �What is
humour?� construed conceptually. Most of these concern the proper relationship
of humour to other phenomena, such as laughter, emotion, pleasure and aesthetic
appreciation. First, humour and laughter are not coextensive, that is, not all
laughter, by any means, is occasioned by humour. Laughter can result from, among
other things, tickling, nitrous oxide, organic disorder, joy, embarrassment or
vengeful exultation. Second, not all humour is productive of laughter, even in
appropriate subjects; humour may engender amusement without any behavioural
manifestation, or with only the lesser one of smiling. Third, humour does not
always produce amusement, its characteristic pleasure, even in appropriate
subjects; certain background conditions of mood or psychic preparedness also
need to be met. Fourth, humour seems to have both a cognitive and an affective
component, which are bound up together in the response.
Humour is intimately related to learning and cognition.
Psychologically, I see no
great difference between heuristic and logical reasoning; deduction is
"just another" kind of evidence. I am inclined to doubt that anything
very resembling formal logic could be a good model for human reasoning.� (The paper by Hewitt and Kornfeld might
suggest a possible avenue of compromise (William A. Kornfeld, Using Parallel
Processes for Problem Solving, MIT Artificial Intelligence Memo 561, Dec. 1979)
At one time, many
philosophers held that faultless "laws of thought" were somehow
inherent, a priori, in the very nature of mind.� This belief was twice shaken in the past century; first when
Russell and his successors showed how the logic men employ can be defective,
and later when Freud and Piaget started to reveal the tortuous ways in which
our minds actually develop.
People tried to get round Russell�s paradoxes ("Who shaves the Barber, who shaves everyone who does not shave himself?") by eliminating the fatal self-references, but:
I doubt that any logic that
prohibits self-reference can be adequate for psychology: no mind can have
enough power -- without the power to think about Thinking itself.
He argues that we function by �building into our minds two complementary functions�:
We work to discover
"islands of power" within which commonsense reasoning seems safe.
We work also to find and mark
the unsafe boundaries of those islands.
our philosophers and
mathematicians display paradigms -- like the Barber, the Tortoise, and the Liar
-- to tell us where to stop -- and laugh. I suggest that when such paradigms
are incorporated into the mind, they form intellectual counterparts to Freud's
emotional censors.
Laughter's facial component
suggests that it evolved in connection with social communication. �It appears to be derived (ethologically) in
part from a "conciliatory" expression, but it includes also a baring
of teeth that suggests a defensive-aggressive mixture. - [Note 14]
Displacement.� Lorenz (Ref. KL) and
Tinbergen (Ref. NT) frequently observed peculiar, seemingly pointless behaviors
when an animal is poised between fight and flight.� What better time to consider negotiating?� So, one might a priori expect to find ambiguities
in the primordial germs of social sign-systems.
By a curious coincidence, our theories of how minds work must probably have themselves this same peculiar, web-like character -- albeit for a different reason.� For (I think) the only way a person can understand anything very complicated is to understand it at each moment only locally -- like the spider itself, seeing but a few threads and crossings from each viewpoint.� Strand by strand, we build within our minds these webs of theory, from hard-earned locally intelligible fragments.� The mind-spider's theory is correct to the extent that the model in his head corresponds to the mechanism in his head.� [Note 15] I don't mean all this to seem pessimistic.� It is not necessary, in understanding something, to have all one knows about it active in the mind at one time.� One does need to have access to fragments of maps, at various levels of detail, of what one knows. The thesis of Kuipers (Ref. BK-78?), which proposes a theory of how a person's knowledge of a city might be represented in computational terms, might be re-interpreted as a metaphor for how minds might deal with their own knowledge.
Most dictionary definitions when defining humour include the psychologist�s three usages:
stimulus � �comicality�
response � �faculty of perceiving�
disposition � �state of mind�
Drever�s Penguin Dictionary of Psychology: much narrower definition of humour:
the �character of a complex situation exciting joyful and in the main, quiet, laughter, either directly, through sympathy, or through empathy�
provocative definition of laughter: an �emotional response, expressive normally of joy, in the child and the unsophisticated adult�
18th century Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son: �there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter�
Laughter is:
�the mind sneezing� (Wyndham Lewis)
�the hiccup of a fool� (John Ray)
�(speaks) the vacant mind� (Oliver Goldsmith)
In the 1930s, Ludovici argued that humour was the principal cause of the decadence of the times, and laughter was a sinister behaviour. Humour and laughter have only come to be regarded as important in recent times, e.g. the Bible, where there is little mention of non-scornful laughter.
Humour is valued as a way of
preserving order, changing group esteem and cohesion, expressing allegiances
and revealing attitudes with relative impunity, testing the standing of a
relationship, maintaining or undermining a status hierarchy
Plato Philebus (355BC) � saw the weak as a justifiably prime target for humour.
Aristotle Poetics� - the ludicrous was based in deformities, defects and ugliness which are neither destructive or painful.
Hobbes Leviathan and Human Nature � superiority theory: laughter as a self-glorifying, triumphant gesture emanating from comparisons made with inferiors
Schopenhauer (1819) - incongruity
Kant (1790) � �an affection arising from the sudden transformation of strained expetation into nothing�
Spencer (1860) � descending incongruity, when �the conscious is unawares transferred from great things to small�.
Freud (1905, 1928) � synthesis of incongruity, relief and conflict, distinguished �comic�, �wit� and �humour � granted relief through diverting energy from unpleasant emotion. Techniques in �joke-work� shared with �dream-work�, especially �condensation� and �displacement� � deviations from normal thought and representation, entail an economy of thought and expression. The ludicrous always results in saving expenditure of psychic energy � the joke is brief, and the amusement is the most economical response to the joke. Humour can lift repressions, and is an important defence.
Modern approaches focus on mini-theories, e.g.:
stimulus � content, structure, complexity
individual differences � personality, cognitions, physiology
overt expression � verbal and non-verbal reactions
social influences � effects of companions and audiences
This modern approach tacitly recognises that we sometimes laugh even when things aren�t humorous, that we can laugh in pretty much any circumstances or state of mind � quote from The sense of humour (Potter, 1954) about the diverse situations that evoke laughter, from sensations, novelty, other people, awkwardness, nervousness, creative pleasure, relief, sex jokes etc.
Laughter is difficult to study in the lab, because few people laugh out loud there, and so laughter is often excluded from indices of humour appreciation.
|
Non-humorous laughter situations |
Humorous laughter situations |
|
tickling peekaboo (in babies) being tossed and caught (babies) seeing a magic trick regaining safety after being in danger solving a puzzle or problem winning an athletic contest or a game running into an old friend on the street discovering that one has won a lottery anticipating some enjoyable activity feeling embarrassed hysteria breathing nitrous oxide |
hearing a joke listening to someone ruin a joke watching someone who doesn�t get a joke watching a practical joke played on someone seeing someone in odd-looking clothes seeing adult twins dressed alike seeing someone mimic someone else seeing other people experience misfortune hearing outlandish boasting or �tall tales� hearing clever insults hearing triple rhymes or excessive alliteration hearing spoonerisms and puns hearing a child use some adult phrase correctly simply feeling in a silly mood and laughing at just about anything |
He discusses the superiority, incongruity and relief theories, dismissing them all to some extent, mainly because they don�t cover all of the features that a general theory of laughter needs to. He replaces them with his theory, that laughter arises out of (and, in the opposite causal direction, can give rise to) a pleasant, (usually sudden) psychological shift.
He is defining �humour� as the �humour of incongruity�. Where one has no expectations at all, like an infant, things are funny because they are novel and surprising. By adulthood, we have formed a robust, wide-ranging and abstract conceptual schema, where everything has connotations, relations to other things and produces expectations. The �incongruous� is relative to our picture of the congruous, and varies across periods, cultures, ages and individuals.
crying = disappointment + helplessness
Boston (1974): humour �consists primarily in what is observed, whereas wit originates in the observer.�
He distinguishes incongruity of things and incongruity of presentation, and the various forms these incongruities can take, including people, actions, conversation etc.
He discusses the various criticisms, dismissals and arguments against laughter, humour and comedy, going on to argue that there is something fundamentally valuable or pleasurable in humour, that it is an aesthetic experience enjoyable in its own right, rather like watching the sun rise. Of course, there can�t be any danger or anger which would detract from the experience, just as we cannot enjoy a piece of art under threat or practical engagement (e.g. avarice) � indeed, an aesthetic experience can be defined as �attending to some object of awareness for the sake of the experience itself�.
Humour is a necessary and dynamic part of learning. He rebuts Plato�s three charges:
1. in humour, we are exposed to something base, i.e. human shortcomings, which can rub off on us � humour is harmful to one�s character
humour is cognitive, and so cannot be morally objectionable � plus, who says that it necessarily induces us to imitation
2. in laughter, we lose control of our rational, higher faculties, so persons of worth must not be represented in literature or drama as overcome by laughter
Morreall argues that humour involves not a suspension of reason, but a non-serious use of reason � he also believes that amusement is not an emotion
3. laughter is basically scorn, and so is antisocial and uncharitable
he doesn�t buy the superiority theory � at least, not as a theory of humour � it�s all about pleasant psychological shifts
The medievals were right when they said that it is because we are rational animals that we are the animals that laugh. He sees an intimate relationship between a playful, perceptive, imaginative use of reason and humour.
He talks of humour in terms of distancing oneself from the here and now. Humour �views life, even life now, in as soft a light as we view the past� (Leacock). It�s also profoundly liberating, which is why strict regimes are always so fearful of humour�s subversive character (e.g. Hitler�s joke courts, set up to try people naming animals �Adolf�), even sometimes trying to use the �weapon of satire� to their own ends, e.g. the Russian humour journal, Krokodil. Victor Frankl went on to incorporate humour into his psychotherapeutic techniques, said of the concentration camps:
Unexpectedly, most of us were
overcome by a grim sense of humour. We knew we had nothing to lose except our
ridiculously naked lives � Humour was another of the soul�s weapons in the
fight for self-preservation � Humour more than anything else in the human
make-up can afford an aloofnes and an ability to rise above any situation, if
only for a� few seconds�.
He likens the humorous attitude to the �philosophical attitude�, in that both allow one to step back from the practical situation, and take a calmer, more objective, less emotionally-coloured view of things. Humour is also important in stressful situations, e.g. emergency areas in hospitals. A sense of humour �frees us from vanity, on the one hand, and from pessimism on the other by keeping us larger than what we do, and greater than what can happen to us�. He considers the effect of dissipating brainwashing that humour can have and its possible implications for both mental and physical health.
He discusses the ethics of humour, arguing that situations where cruelty, scorn, derision or detaching from a situation (e.g. where someone gets run over, or close calls when drink driving) are wrong normally, are the same as those when there is an added dimension of humour. Finding humour in situations can be morally objectionable whenever it involves our distancing ourselves too much from the situation, e.g. laughing at someone who lightly bangs their head is fine, but someone who hurts themselves is not � this is Aristotle�s way of looking at things, cf the Golden Mean.
He then points to the extremely social aspects of humour: the fact that we rarely laugh alone, that laughter is infectious in groups, that being the only person laughing is a form of exclusion, that laugher in a quarrel usually signals the end of the quarrel, that a shared joke signals acceptance amongst new acquaintances etc. He argues that this social aspect comes under the non-dangerous, non-priority, non-practical conditions necessary for an aesthetic experience. Humour is also a good way to smooth difficult interactions, and say difficult things, perhaps because it take this more �objective� stance. The level of shared non-manipulative humour is a good indication of intimacy. He supplies some examples of institutionalised humour and jesting through the ages, e.g. the �fool society� of the Babinian Republic in Poland (King: Do you have a king? BR: As long as you are alive, we would never dream of electing another.), American tribal jester classes, Mardi Gras, Egyptian Pharaoh festivals etc. He ends with a quote from Erasmus� In praise of Folly, where Folly, a goddess-figure, explains how we all need folly in almost every moment of our daily lives just to keep from despair, to enable us to live with ourselves and love others.
His views on the extent to which a sense of humour improves and affects one�s mental life are OTT.
He quotes Nietzsche�s description of humanity and its intelligence as insignificant to the universe. The ultimate humour arises �from the incongruous contrast between the eager fret of our life and its final nothingness� (Leacock) � the human condition itself is funny.
In contrast, the Christian world-view places our every action, inaction, idle word and joke in the context of a life that should be devoted to the divine will. A true Christian would be truly humourless, and indeed Christ shows no signs of humour � some figurative language, although the example of a camel through a needle being more likely to go to heaven than a rich man is ridiculous enough to perhaps bring a smile to our lips if we consider it. And God himself could never find anything funny, since in his omniscience he could experience no psychological shifts, and even incongruities would simply be aberrations from his grand scheme.
The Incarnate Word was never known to laugh. For Him who knows all
things, whose powers are infinite, the comic does not exist�.
Not all religions are like this. Greek polytheism and Buddhism are obvious exceptions. The humorous view in general sees nothing as �of absolute importance, nothing monopolises attention. The world is seen as a place not only for practical activity, but also for play, not all situations have practical significance � there are many free moments simply to be enjoyed.�
Even if we follow Camus in thinking that the only really important question is whether we should commit suicide, Morreall suggests that humour gives a strong reason for answering No. �If only for the amusement it provides, life is worth living.�
In the eyes of one who
has all knowledge and all power, the comic does not exist � Baudelaire, On the essence of laughter
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter - Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)
comedy is tragedy plus
time. - Carol Burnett
The Olympian Vice. --Despite the philosopher who, as a genuine Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds--"Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature, which every thinking mind will strive to overcome" (Hobbes),--I would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing--up to those who are capable of golden laughter. And supposing that Gods also philosophise, which I am strongly inclined to believe, owing to many reasons--I have no doubt that they also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-like and new fashion--and at the expense of all serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even in holy matters. � Nietzsche, BGE, 294
Koko also rhymes and jokes; on one occasion she used a metaphor of an elephant to refer to herself when she pretended a long tube was her "trunk" - Patterson & Linden 1981: 143)
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really
enjoys it and the frog generally dies as a result.
Keep that sense of humor; it's critical.
Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of
humour and passion
No matter how bad a situation is, if you can't laugh at
it, you are in really deep shit.
Fortunate are they who can laugh at themselves; they will
never want for amusement.
by humour, I am appealing to a difficult distinction to pin down, but one that is intuitively obvious � the difference between being told a joke, and being tickled
consider the humour behaviour of children
is there anything important I can say about �suitcase� terms in general, like humour, consciousness, intentionality etc.
humour + intentionality???
like aesthetics, and ethics, the problem in defining humour is that we can only appeal to our intuition through examples. is there a parallel with consciousness, being privileged??? no, because anyone can tell if I'm laughing � but I might be silently amused�
humour as related to potency, e.g. British developing irony in response to loss of world power, American lack of it, the gods have humour, Baudelaire quote
the diverse range of humour as an attack on the unity of consciousness, modularisation in the brain, innateness??? what about a general attack on non-connectionist ways of thinking about things, taking a heavily operationalist standpoint � neobehaviourism???
humour and ethics � humour as a virtue???
what about a general discussion of the connectionist paradigm vs mind???
what role do god and the gods play in humour??? what about humour, pain and immortality???
humour and religion/seriousness??? � different religions encourage different levels of seriousness of world view
humour, laughter, comedy, funny, mirth, happy/pleasure, smile, joke, amusement, mock, sarcasm, irony, wit, word-play, pun, vaudeville, ticklish, metaphor, nonsense, beauty, ambiguity, allusion
is humour a �suitcase� term (Minsky)???
Freud - avoiding mental censors, releasing psychic energy
learning � fuckups and things to avoid (censor) are funny
McCrone - unexpected twist, new perspective
timing???
linguistic - stretching wit by trying to be clever
social � bonding, e.g. rugby humour
Bergson - highlights machine-like fallibility
novelty � old jokes aren�t funny (because the censors have already been constructed???)
wit � evolved to be appreciated because it�s a sign of intelligence (Greg)???
humour as a means of experimenting on us (Asimov)???
humour and other internally intelligible thinking systems (with their own �logic�), of which reason is another???
humour, 3rd person, objectivity � surprise???
did I think that my brilliant point about why the chicken crossed the road stemmed from the fact that we failed to impute mental states to the chicken, we expected an answer couched in the third-person, probably in terms of environmental causes or influences, and were surprised when our perspective was subverted into a first-person explanation
humour as an aesthetic experience
is humour just another emotion??? is it a special type of emotion???
is it cognitive???
did it evolve??? does it have an adaptive function???
is there anything that links consciousness and humour???
humour vs rationality???
is humour the key to our humanity??? perhaps our Britishness�
humour and the uniqueness of humanity??? is humour fundamentally linguistic???
do animals have it???
why do we feel pity/disgust/contempt/worry, rather than laughter, at people who are unable to adapt to the physical environment??? why do we ostracise them in the playground???
perhaps it�s all part of the same social teaching function � after, all we laugh at the gangly kid at school too. but it does seem as though there is more and less to laughter than the mechanical-seeming
what would Bergson make of today�s (and more to the point, the future�s) advanced machines, and the perception of people as themselves meat-machines???
perhaps he�d say that this is what laughter is all about � it�s about moving away from our inherent laughable machineness, towards the flexibility that our aliveness adds/is, and that more and more complex machines would be less and less funny???
would the Eternal Recurrence be funny???
is the mere prospect of automatism funny, or is it only when it is in the context of automaton-like humans, or more specifically, only acts committed by humans that are reminiscent of automata???
has humour evolved??? can it be described wholly as an adaptive function???
mustn�t animals have humour too, then??? or are they themselves always too highly machine-like???
does that mean that the more machine-like, the funnier something is???
can we talk of anything other than acts/events being funny??? can people, or situations, or places be funny???
are there different strands of humour???
are �humour� and �laughter� synonymous??? what about tickling???
what about humour in a pre-mechanistic age???
can we incorporate the element of surprise into Minsky�s account of humour as censorship???
he mentions novelty and new jokes in relation to new censors being formed, and that when we laugh we focus our attention on the absurdity or joke or whatever, perhaps putting it into a short-term memory where it can be absorbed by a censor???
how do Minsky and Dennett differ in their pandemonic views of mind???
but laughter and mirth aren�t always positive, are they???
well, they are usually pleasant though, even if they�re bitter or resigned
doesn�t his theory cover too much, i.e. aren�t there pleasant psychological shifts which don�t make us laugh??? or if not, then he may have pinned down laughter, but at the expense of explaining the more interesting phenomenon of humour???
aren�t most of the supposedly �humourous laughter situations� fairly non-humorous??? is whether something is humorous or not easy to distinguish???
what about his story about his friend filling up the radiator with petrol by accident � how is that a pleasant psychological shift???
humour is a pleasant cognitive shift (and thus an aesthetic experience), and laughter is a positive emotional shift � what if the two mix???
how has humour evolved???
can his account of humour adequately explain its incredibly powerful effect, e.g. in the concentration camps???
does he adequately explain the social aspect of humour � surely there�s more to it than just an objective, flexible perspective, and non-threatening conditions???
can one be religious and humorous???
Morreall seems to think that a humorous attitude to life is inherently at odds with a serious (e.g. religious) one, where teleology and devotion are stressed.
do I think the Baudelaire quote�s truth (In the eyes of one who has all knowledge and
all power, the comic does not exist)
stems from incongruity or superiority??? does it depend on the translation???