It’s Fu n n y ‘Ca u s e It’s Tru e : Th e Ligh th e arte d Ph ilo s o p h e rs ’ So cie ty In tro d u ctio n to Ph ilo s o p h y th ro u gh H u m o r Introduction: What is Philosophy? 2 Lo gic Thinking Critically 8 19 Me ta p h ys ics Why You’re Not Worthy Sophia Stone A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Misery Go Down Vanessa Voss Got IT?: Introducing Incongruity Theory Michael Cundall My, How Clever Steven Gim bel 29 34 42 50 59 Ep is te m o lo gy J oking as Truth-Telling Thom as Wilk I Laugh Because It’s Absurd Chris Kram er Stop Saying Things are Funny Because They’re True Liz Sills 64 Eth ics Tendentious J okes are Im m oral Eugenio Zaldivar It Really Is J ust a J oke J ennifer Marra Henrigillis Punching Up and Down in the Com ic Thunderdom e Grant J ulin 98 Ae s th e tics Why Moral Failure Leads to Com ic Failure Ya’er Kahn It’s Still Funny Though Connor Kianpour Form and Funny Steven Gim bel 168  71 77 90 148 156 172 178 186 ϭ It Re ally Is Ju s t a Jo ke J ennifer Marra Henrigillis J okes are funny things. When I tell a joke, I’m telling it because I thin k it’s funny, and I think you’ll think it’s funny too. Or I think it’s funny, and I don’t care if you find it funny, because I think it’s funny, and telling it will tickle m e. Or, I know you won’t find it funny, which I will find funny. As philosophers, we want to be very precise about what we m ean when we use words, because the way we defin e words determ ines whether you and I can agree, and whether you and I are even talking about the sam e thing. Defining our term s assures both of us that we are talking about the sam e thing, and m ean the sam e thing, so we can figure out if agree or disagree about that thing. When I say “jokes are funny things”, philosophers the world over roll their eyes and dem and that I be m ore specific. But I don’t really have to be. J okes are funny things, as I’ll explain, and funny things have no necessary m oral value. Moral value is a term that indicates that a thing, like punting a baby, can be judged as either m oral (good, ethical, praiseworthy, right, just) or imm oral (bad, unethical, blam eworthy, wrong, unjust). When we say som ething has a m oral value, we m ean that it is a thing that we can m ake m oral judgm ents about. I m ake a m oral judgm ent when I say that it is bad, unethical, blam eworthy, wrong, and unjust to punt a baby, no m atter how football-shaped that particular baby m ight be. This is a particular sort of judgm ent – a com m on one, but a specific one. Another sort of judgm ent is a judgm ent of perception, or a conclusion we decide upon based on sensory eviden ce. I can judge a chair as green, while you could judge it as blue. When the room is brightly lit, the chair appears green to m e. I judge it, that is, decide, that it is green. But when you walk into the room , the room is dark. You see a blue chair. You decide that the chair is blue. We can disagree about our judgm ents based on the sense data we collected from our experience of the chair at the tim e we saw it. We can disagree about the color of the chair. We won’t know who is right or who is wrong about the color until we both go back into the room together and turn on the lights and  ϭϰϴ look at the chair. Im m anuel Kant called these a posteriori judgm ents 37. These judgm ents rely on experience to m ake and disagreem ents rely on experience or the senses (called em pirical evidence) to resolve. J udgm ents of perception are am oral. This m eans that they have n o m oral value at all. I can be factually right or wrong when it com es to the color of the chair, but I’m not m orally right or wrong if I see a green chair and you see a blue chair. Another sort of judgm ent are a priori judgm ents 38 . These are things we can judge without having any experience of them . I can judge a triangle to have three sides even if I’m not looking at a triangle and even if I’ve n ever seen a triangle. I can m ake this a priori judgm ent because I know that the definition of “triangle” is “a three-sided figure”. I don’t have to ever see a triangle to know that this is true, because I know what the word m eans. I can use the sam e sort of judgm ent to conclude that 2 + 2 = 4. I don’t need to count two things and then two m ore things to know that the total will be four things; it is logically, obviously, and autom atically true, without em pirical verification (or, to put another way, without having to use m y senses to experience it as true). A priori judgm ents are am oral. It’s not m orally right or wrong for a triangle to have three sides, it’s sim ply defin itionally true that triangles have three sides. I can judge, a priori, that jokes are funny things. In order for a joke to be a joke, it m ust be funny. If it’s not funny, it’s not a joke. I don’t have to hear a joke to know it m ust be funny – funniness is the bare m inim um of what a joke has to be in order to be a joke. It can be defined in m ore specific ways too, as philosophers of hum or do, but the necessary condition for a joke to be a joke is that it is funny, and I can know this without ever needing to hear a joke and without ever having to verify it by hearing a joke. This is why I won’t go further in specifying a defin ition. Whatever other features you throw in there – that jokes can be verbal or nonverbal, that jokes are told or perform ed by jokesters – it’s an a priori fact that jokes are funny, whether verbal or non, etc. Whatever jokes are, they’re perform ed by people. Dogs don’t tell jokes. We can find a dog funny, but a dog isn’t going to ever say, “Stop m e if you’ve heard this one…”. Because people are the only things that can be m oral or im m oral, we assum e that all the things that people do are subject to m oral judgem ent – we don’t say that a tiger is  <ĂŶƚ͕ƌŝƚŝƋƵĞŽĨWƵƌĞZĞĂƐŽŶϳͬϭϮ ϯϳ ϯϴ/ďŝĚϰ  ϭϰϵ m orally bad for stalking and killing a zebra, but we do say that a hum an is m orally bad if they stalk and kill another person. Insofar as jokes are perform ed by people, it’s com m on to im pose all sorts of m oral judgm ents onto them . But not all the things that people do are either good or bad, right or wrong, m oral or im m oral. The way I tie m y shoes isn’t a m oral action, and it doesn’t have m oral value, neither does m y preference for purple over pink. But, som e philosophers argue, when you laugh at a joke, or tell one, you are doing som ething that has m oral value – you’re m orally endorsing the ideas of the joke, or signing off on those ideas, or agreeing with those ideas. 39 But that’s just as silly as saying that I’m m orally endorsing the idea of tying m y shoes in a certain way. When I tie m y shoes bunny-ears style, I’m not doing it because I think it’s m orally right to do so, or that I’m endorsing it as the way everyone should tie their shoes, or because I’m agreeing that this is the m oral way that shoes should be tied. I’m sim ply tying m y shoes the way that I prefer. I don’t prescribe that m ethod to you or say you’re bad for not doing it the sam e way. I’m not even thinking that it’s the only correct, or m orally right, way to tie shoes. It’s just the way I tie them . If you told m e I was doing som ething m orally wrong in tying m y shoes that way, it would be just as absurd as telling m e I’m m orally wrong for liking purple m ore than pink. Laughing is involuntary. 40 It’s a physiological, bodily response to a stim ulus. To say that som eon e has done som ething m orally wrong by laughing at a joke is as silly as saying that som eone is m orally wrong for sneezing. Saying som eone is m orally wrong for telling a joke is just as silly as saying that som eone is m orally wrong for thinking purple is better than pink. The person tells the joke because she thinks it’s funny. You m ight not think it’s funny, but you m ight not like purple either. You’re not m orally wrong for not liking purple, and you’re not m orally right or wrong for thinking the joke isn’t funny. But it’s not the joke’s fault you don’t like it. It’s yours. You just don’t find it funny. So, for you, it’s not a joke. And as soon as you decide it’s not a joke, you change the definition of what you’ve heard from “joke” to “statem ent” or “claim ”, and once you do that you can, and often will, start to im pose m oral categories onto it.  ϯϵ/͛ǀĞĞǀĞŶƐĂŝĚƚŚŝƐďĞĨŽƌĞ͕ŝŶDĂƌƌĂϮϬϭϵĂŶĚϮϬϮϬ͊/͛ŵŶŽƚĂůŽŶĞƚŚŽƵŐŚ͕ĂŶĚĂůŽƚŽĨŚŝŐŚůLJƌĞƐƉĞĐƚĂďůĞƐĐŚŽůĂƌƐŚĂǀĞŵĂĚĞƐŝŵŝůĂƌ ĂƌŐƵŵĞŶƚƐʹƐĞĞĂůĚŝǀĂƌĂŶĚ:ƵůŝŶŝŶƚŚŝƐǀŽůƵŵĞ͕<ƌĂŵĞƌϮϬϭϱ͕ĂŶĚ^ŵƵƚƐϮϬϭϬ͕ĂŵŽŶŐŵĂŶLJ͘ ϰϬ^ĞĞWƌŽǀŝŶĞϮϬϬϬ  ϭϱϬ Let’s take the following joke as an exam ple: What do you call a cow on the floor? Ground beef. This one kills to an audience of five-year-olds. Little kids love punny jokes about anim als – likely because they are just learning how language works and they’re learning a lot about the different kinds of anim als in the world. This is right in their wheelhouse, an d boy, is it a knee-slapper. If you don’t think the joke is funny but can see why a kid would find it funny, you will still understand it as a joke, but just not one that hits your gigglebutton. But if you can’t see why a kid, or anyone else, would find it funny, then you probably don’t think it’s a joke at all. A vegan or an anim al rights activist (yes, these can be different categories even though they often overlap) m ight take huge exception to this joke. Not only does he not think this joke is funny, he doesn’t understand how anyone could find it funny, and furtherm ore, he doesn’t think you should find it funny either. As soon as he starts thinking in term s of “should”s, he’s taken the joke and shoved it into a m oral category and already begun to m ake m oral judgm ents about it. He does not recognize this as a joke. He m ight recognize it as a statem ent, or a claim , or a sentim ent, one that perhaps underm ines the pain of the cows that are farm ed under inhum ane conditions and turned into m ere products for hum an consum ption. This practice of m akin g m oral judgm ents about jokes requires two closely related but distinct m oves. First is a category m istake and the second is a m istake in judgm ent. Let’s take each one in turn. A category m istake is when you judge som ething of one category by the criteria of a different category. When I take som ething that has no m oral value and act as though it does have m oral value, I’m m aking a category m istake. I m ake the sam e m istake when I confuse an “is” with an “ought”; when I say that because som ething is the case, that it ought to be the case. For exam ple, if I say, “There’s nothing wrong with lying, people do it all the tim e”, I’m con fusing categories. What people actually do says nothing about what people should do. In the case of the vegan, he’s taking som ethin g that has no m oral  ϭϱϭ value (a pun) and judging it by the criteria of som ething that does have m oral value (a statem ent about the m oral perm issibility about turning cows into food). This is precisely the m istake philosophers and non-philosophers m ake whenever they m ake m oral judgm ents about jokes. The above joke is not arguing for the idea that grinding cows into beef is a good thing, nor is it underm ining the pain and suffering of anim als in industrial farm ing. And I can assure you that that six-year-old who loves that joke is not trying to slip in any m oral im plications whatsoever when she tells it. The joke is sim ple wordplay. It has m eaning insofar as words have m eanings that you need to understand in order to get the wordplay, but there is truly nothing beyond definitions of words at play here (pun intended). Because jokes do require understanding of words in order to m ake sense, som e folks argue that jokes require us to understand norm s of cultural m orality in order to get a joke. But this is a category m istake. All I need to understand the joke is to understand the m eanings, or definitions, of words, not tie those words to cultural m orality. I can get a joke and find it funny, or I can get a joke and not find it funny. If I get the m eaning of the words and fin d it funny, I understand it as a joke. If I understand the m eaning of the words and I don’t find it funny, and don’t understand why you find it funny, I don’t think it’s a joke. If I understand the m eaning of the words an d then tie cultural m orality to those words, then I’m m aking a category m istake, whether or not I find the joke funny. As soon as I’ve m ade the category m istake of applying m oral categories to an am oral joke, I can im m ediately (or autom atically, or sim ultaneously) m ake a m istake in judgm ent. A m istake in judgm ent is when I judge som ething of one kind as if it is of a different kind. For exam ple, if I refuse to believe that triangles have three sides until I’ve seen a large sam ple of triangles and counted the sides, I’m m aking a m istake in judgm ent. I’m using a judgm ent of perception when I could easily m ake an a priori judgm ent that will give m e the right answer. By refusing the believe that triangles have three sides until I’ve counted enough of them to prove it, I’ve not only given m yself a whole m ess of work to do, but I’ve also given m yself an im possible task. I’d have to count all of the triangles that have existed or could exist if the three-sidedness of triangles was the sort of thing that could be verified through the senses. No m atter how m any I count, I would always have to leave open the possibility that one day I could  ϭϱϮ com e upon a triangle that has m ore or less than three sides. Even som eone like David Hum e, one of the m ost fam ous em piricists in the history of philosophy (m eaning that he argued that new knowledge could only be accessed through the senses), would say I’m m aking a m istake in judgm ent if I judge triangles as if they are the sort of things that can be proven or disproven to have three sides based on em pirical evidence. 41 When I place a joke within the m oral category and then m ake a m oral judgm ent about it, I’m m aking both a category m istake and a m istake in judgm ent. I’m insisting that a joke is the sort of thing that has m oral value, and then m akin g a judgm ent about what that value am ounts to – right or wrong, good or bad. But that has everything to do with m e and nothing to do with the joke. I’ve m iscategorized the joke, and then I’ve im posed m oral judgm ents based on that m iscategorization. The joke isn’t wrong, I am . Now of course you’re thinking, “yeah sure, for a joke like that it’s easy to argue that there’s no m oral value. But what about racist or sexist jokes? Those ones definitely have m oral value!”. Challenge accepted, dear reader. “We like our beer the way we like our violence: dom estic.”42 Oooooooo. Uh oh. Is that joke endorsing dom estic violence? Is it m aking fun of people who are physically assaulted by their partners? Is it underm in ing the seriousness of intim ate partner violen ce? Only if you m ake a category m istake. This joke requires you to know the m eaning of words, but it doesn’t require you to m ake an y m oral judgm ents about the words. It doesn’t require you to defend the plight of abusers or have a m oral disregard for their victim s. Com edian Bill Burr explains in his set that this joke was written on a sandwich board outside of a bar. A custom er com plain ed, and the m an ager said that that was just their sense of hum or and to have beer. The custom er took a picture of the joke, posted it on social m edia, an d the subsequent outcry led to the firing of both the waitress who wrote the joke and the m anager that defended her. As som eone who understands jokes as am oral, he argues that firing these em ployees was com pletely unjustified. He says that it is a great joke: “there is zero fat on that – you need every word of that joke. You  ,ƵŵĞ͕ŶŶƋƵŝƌLJŽŶĐĞƌŶŝŶŐ,ƵŵĂŶhŶĚĞƌƐƚĂŶĚŝŶŐ͕^ĞĐƚŝŽŶϰ ϰϭ ϰϮdŚŝƐũŽŬĞŝƐƌĞĨĞƌĞŶĐĞĚďLJŝůůƵƌƌŝŶŚŝƐϮϬϭϰƐƉĞĐŝĂů͞/͛ŵ^ŽƌƌLJzŽƵ&ĞĞůdŚĂƚtĂLJ͘͟  ϭϱϯ take one word out and it doesn’t work, it’s a perfect joke”. 43 He goes on to argue that no one who reads that joke is going to suddenly think it’s m orally acceptable to abuse their partner. “What are you telling m e? You’re telling m e som eon e who n ever hit a wom an is going to com e walking in, read that joke, an d just be like ‘Wait a m inute!’?”44 You m ay object that just because the joke wouldn’t necessarily cause som eone to actually abuse another person doesn’t m ean the joke isn’t im m oral. In other words, your taking the perspective that there is som ething beyond the actual consequences of the joke that determ ine its m oral value, while Burr is arguing from a con sequentialist perspective. Consequentialists argue that the m oral value of an action is entirely based in the outcom e of the action; if the action does not lead to negative consequences, like the abuse of wom en, then the action is m oral. But you’re m aking a category m istake. Burr isn’t arguing from a m oral position – he’s arguing from the position that jokes have no m oral m eaning at all. If som eone were to read that joke and derive m oral m eaning from it, they would be m aking a category m istake, just as som eone who objects to it on m oral grounds is m aking a category m istake. J okes don’t m ake people abuse people. When you find a joke to be m orally reprehensible, you’re m aking a category m istake followed by a m oral judgm ent. But it’s not the joke’s fault that you take m oral exception to it – it’s yours. That doesn’t m ean that you are at m oral fault for your disgust or disapproval, it just m eans that you m ade a philosophical error in how you understand jokes. If it’s not funny to you, and you can’t im agine a world in which it is funny to anyone, then you sim ply don’t recognize it as a joke. If you don’t recognize it as a joke, you can m ake m oral judgm ents about it so long as whatever category you do recogn ize it as is an expression of a m oral category. But you’ll want to be careful when you do that. Not every expression is an expression of a m oral category, an d you don’t want to find yourself m aking m oral judgm ents about m y preference for purple or the three sidedness of a triangle. You can be philosophically consistent and say that you don’t like the m oral sentim ent expressed by a statem ent, but it would be a m istake to say that you don’t like the m oral sentim ent of a joke. J okes don’t m ake m oral sentim ent. They m ake giggles.  ƵƌƌϮϬϭϰ ϰϯ ϰϰ/ďŝĚ  ϭϱϰ Bibliography Burr, Bill. Bill Burr: I’m Sorry You Feel That W ay . Film . Netflix, 20 14. http:/ / www.im db.com / title/ tt3823690 / . Hum e, David. An Enquiry Concerning Hum an Understanding. Edited by Tom L. Beaucham p. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Kant, Im m anuel. Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Cam bridge University Press, 1998 . Kram er, Chris A. “Subversive Hum or.” PhD Dissertation, Marquette University, 20 15. http:/ / epublications.m arquette.edu/ dissertations_ m u/ 424. Marra, J ennifer. “Hum or, Power, and Culture: A New Theory on the Experience and Ethics of Hum or.” Dissertation, Marquette University, 20 19. Marra, J ennifer. “Toward an Objective Ethic of Hum or.” In Ethics in Com edy , edited by Steven A. Benko. McFarland Press, 20 20 . Provine, Robert. Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. Harm ondsworth: Penguin, 20 0 0 . Sm uts, Aaron. “The Ethics of Hum or: Can Your Sense of Hum or Be Wrong?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13, no. 3 (20 10 ): 333– 47.  ϭϱϱ