Gettysburg College Open Educational Open Textbooks Resources 2021 It's Funny 'Cause It's True: The Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society’s Introduction to Philosophy through Humor Jennifer Marra Henrigillis Georgia State University Steven Gimbel Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/oer Part of the Aesthetics Commons, Epistemology Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Metaphysics Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation It's Funny 'Cause It's True: The Lighthearted Philosophers' Society's Introduction to Philosophy through Humor. Edited by Henrigillis, Jennifer Marra and Gimbel, Steven. The Lighthearted Philosophers' Society, 2021 This open access book is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. It's Funny 'Cause It's True: The Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society’s Introduction to Philosophy through Humor Description It's Funny 'Cause It's True is an introductory text in philosophy exploring logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics through questions in the philosophy of humor. Subfields eceivr e a substantive introduction with interactive essays written to be accessible to undergraduates. Keywords philosophy, introduction to philosophy, humor Disciplines Aesthetics | Epistemology | Ethics and Political Philosophy | Metaphysics | Philosophy Publisher Lighthearted Philosophers' Society Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This book is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/oer/10 It’s Funny ‘Cause It’s True: The Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society’s Introduction to Philosophy through Humor Introduction: What is Philosophy? 2 Logic 6 Thinking Critically 17 Metaphysics 26 Why You’re Not Worthy Sophia Stone 31 A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Misery Go Down Vanessa Voss 38 Got IT?: Introducing Incongruity Theory Michael Cundall 45 My, How Clever Steven Gimbel 53 Epistemology 58 Joking as Truth-Telling Thomas Wilk 63 I Laugh Because It’s Absurd Chris Kramer 69 Stop Saying Things are Funny Because They’re True Liz Sills 79 Ethics 87 Tendentious Jokes are Immoral Eugenio Zaldivar 128 It Really Is Just a Joke Jennifer Marra Henrigillis 135 Punching Up and Down in the Comic Thunderdome Grant Julin 143 Aesthetics 156 Why Moral Failure Leads to Comic Failure Ya’er Kahn 160 It’s Still Funny Though Connor Kianpour 166 Form and Funny Steven Gimbel 174 1 Introduction: What is philosophy? Two philosophers walk into a bar. If they weren’t so lost in thought, they would have seen the bar before they walked into it. That is the stereotype of the philosopher: head in the clouds, detached from reality, overthinking everything and thereby doing stupid stuff no normal person would ever do. This stereotype is not entirely true….not entirely. Now, it is true that philosophers do think differently about things, but that is because they often do something that is quite abnormal – they think about things. Most of us go through life just accepting things the way that they are. Indeed, whenever someone suggests changing things – even if it would be a change to our benefit – we naturally become agitated and try to stop the change. Humans are wired that way. And THAT is one of the reasons why philosophers are so darned annoying. (…one of the reasons.) Philosophers ask “why?” about things that everyone else simply accepts. We don’t defer to tradition. We don’t defer to power. We don’t defer to laziness. We authentically want to know why and whether there could be another way of thinking about things. An old friend once said that if you ask “why?” once – “why is the sky blue?”, “why do we have two arms?”, “why do we think we know more about things we actually know less about?” – then you are a scientist. If you ask “why?” twice – “why is that the answer?”, “why is that how we go about determining the answer?”, “why do we all think that?” – now you are a philosopher. If you ask “why?” more than twice, then you are just a three-year-old annoying your mother. Philosophy is the study of the second “why?” questions. A second stereotype about philosophy is that when trying to answer these second “why?” questions, just say whatever you think. It’s philosophy, no one is wrong. It’s just your opinion. If you believe that, YOU are wrong. Philosophy is not just about believing whatever you happen to believe. It is about determining what reasons we have in support of various beliefs. Philosophy is about rational belief, that is, figuring out why we should believe claims we may or may not want to believe. It is the giving of strong reasons in support of our beliefs that makes it philosophy. While philosophy may force 2 you to challenge some of the things you believe (even things you believe deeply), it will bolster other beliefs by showing you not only that you do believe it, but why you should believe it. If you simply want to spout unsupported opinions…that’s why we invented the internet. If you want to question your beliefs, if you want to determine whether there are legitimate grounds for believing what you believe, if you want to subject each and every one of your beliefs to rigorous critical scrutiny, then you are philosopher. So, what is philosophy? Let’s answer this question by doing something philosophers do all the time – drawing a distinction. The word “philosophy” can mean two different, but related things. Philosophy is both an activity (something you do) and a subject (something that is). Philosophy as an activity is the giving and assessing of reasons in support of the claim that everyone should believe some particular proposition. To philosophize is not to simply come up with ideas. To philosophize is to try to justify those ideas or to determine whether someone else’s proposed justification actually works. In this way, what philosophers do is argue. The term argument here does not mean what we usually take it to mean. In philosophy, an argument is not some kind of disagreement or confrontation. The term argument, for us, is a technical term. An argument is a set of sentences such that one sentence, what we call the conclusion, is claimed to follow from the other sentences, what we call the premises. The conclusion is the claim that is being argued for. It is what someone is trying to convince you of. The premises are the reasons being given why you should believe the conclusion. Consider the following argument: All U.S. Presidents have been Martians. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a U.S. President Therefore, Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Martian The conclusion here is “Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Martian.” That is the point of the argument. That is what the argument is trying to get you to believe. Why should you agree with that? According to the argument, because LBJ was President of the United States of America and all U.S. Presidents have ben Martians. Those reasons are the premises. 3 Do those premises give you good reason to believe the conclusion? No. Lyndon Baines Johnson was NOT a Martian (he was a Texan). But, at the same time, there does seem to be something right about that argument. What is it? THAT takes us to our second meaning of “philosophy.” Philosophy as an activity is the framing and evaluating of arguments. But lots of studies give and evaluate arguments. Scientists do it. Historians do it. What makes the activity an instance of philosophy is the sort of question. Scientists and historians are interested in empirical questions. A question is empirical if it says something about an observable aspect of the world. Consider the claim, “You have a nose.” That is an empirical claim. If you want to know whether it is true or false, there are several sorts of routes you could take to gaining evidence. You could look in a mirror. You could reach up with your hand and feel your face. These are observations. Any question that can be answered through making observations is empirical. While empirical questions will matter in philosophy, philosophical questions are not themselves straightforwardly empirical. We leave those to the scientists and historians. Philosophical questions are ones for which we give arguments that do not depend completely upon observation. The technical term we use for such questions is a priori. “A priori” simply means before experience. Suppose you turn on the television and see the local news weather report featuring staff meteorologist Karl Popper. Karl guarantees that his forecast is 100% accurate. He says, “Tomorrow it will rain or it won’t. Back to you, Bob.” Is Karl correct? Is his forecast 100% accurate? Well…yes. But only because it was an a priori truth. We don’t need to look out the window tomorrow to know whether the sentence is true or not because it is always true no matter what. We thought he was going to make an empirical claim, maybe “tomorrow, it will rain.” That would be empirical because we would have to check outside to see if it was the case or not. “Tomorrow, it will rain or it won’t” is an a priori claim that is a priori because it is trivial. But not all a priori claims are vacuous like this. Consider the sentence, “It is morally wrong to set your roommate on fire for fun.” That is a sentence that is a priori and not vacuous – especially for your roommate.