Maverick Philosopher

The multiple ambiguity of 'is' has been well-known to philosophers for centuries, although it is only recently that an American president has put the ambiguity to work in a successful bid at saving his political hide. A key distinction is between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication. The decal exploits this ambiguity to achieve its humorous effect. 'I am Grumpy' asserts the identity of the speaker with Grumpy, whereas 'I am grumpy' predicates a property of the speaker, the property of being grumpy. A key difference between identity and predication is that the former is symmetrical whereas the latter is aysmmetrical. (Please do not confuse asymmetry with nonsymmetry. Loves is a nonsymmetrical relation: if I love you it does not follow that you love me; but it also does not follow that you do not love me. If literary memory serves, that was the case with the love of Don Quixote for the fair Dulcinea: he loved her, but she neither loved him nor did not love him. Existing as she did only in his febrile imagination, she was indeterminate with respect to the property of loving him.

In previous posts I have explored the idea that many cases of humor derive from logico-conceptual incoherence, as above. The equivocation on 'is,' as between its predicative and identitarian senses, is at the root of the decal's funniness. For other examples, poke around in my Philosophy of Humor category.

The decal also alludes to a Platonic theme, that of the self-predication of Forms. Forms are not properties but paradigms. Thus the Form Wisdom is the paradigm case of wisdom. As such, Wisdom is wise, The Good is good, Virtue is virtuous — and Grumpiness is grumpy! (Assuming, as Plato would almost certainly not assume, that there is a Form corresponding to 'grumpy.') Thus grumpy things are grumpy in virtue of participating in Grumpiness which is grumpy in virtue of participating in itself.

A self-participating Form is (identically) what it has. Here the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication coalesce. Wisdom is wise in virtue of being identical with itself. God is not a good thing, but Goodness Itself; thus God is not good by having goodness but by being Goodness. Here we glimpse the connection between the self-participation of Forms and the doctrine of the divine simplicity.

And all of this squeezed out of one lousy decal on the rear window of a beat-to-hell pickup truck problably owned by some illegal alien.

So the joke makes no logical sense. It rests on a confusion of X’s being necessary for Y with X’s being sufficient for Y. Publishing may be necessary but it is not sufficient for success. And yet the joke is (moderately) funny. Is it funny despite its making no logical sense? Or is it funny because it makes no logical sense?

What is the root of risibility? Elsewhere, I gave four examples in which it seemed to me that the root of risibility lies in logical/conceptual incoherence. This may be a fifth example.

It just occurs to me that there is a second way to interpret the incoherence at the root of the joke's funniness. There may be an equivocation on 'perish' at work as between perish in the sense of not get tenure and perish in the sense of shuffle off the mortal coil. Indeed, both forms of incoherence could be working in tandem: the confusion of a necessary with a sufficient condition, and an equivocation on 'perish.'

And while we are on the topic of humor, how does a Jewish comedian check his oil? He uses a dipshtick. And what does a follower of Lao Tzu use to brown his bread? A taoster. Those are Maverick Philosopher originals, so I need to receive 23.74% of all revenues your use of them generates. When your revenues exceed $1,000, have your lawyer contact mine.

Some say that to analyze a joke is to kill it. That may be true at the moment of its telling. So first enjoy the joke as a joke, and then analyze it. Why forego the pleasure of analysis? Double your pleasure. The same holds for chess, music, and love. Analysis enhances their pleasures.

Consider a second example. An optimist says, “This is the best of all possible worlds.” A pessimist replies, “I fear you are right.” I suggest that this is funny because of an underlying incoherence in the pessimist’s response, an incoherence that one who laughs at the joke senses. The pessimist’s response is incoherent in that it implies that there could be a world better than the best of all possible worlds – which is impossible. For if the pessimist fears that this world is the best of all possible worlds, then he envisages, and would prefer, a world W better than the best of all possible worlds. Now W is either possible or impossible. Clearly, W is not possible: there cannot be a world better than the best of all possible worlds. So W is impossible.
But if W is impossible, then W cannot be actualized. But a world that cannot be actualized is a world that cannot be reasonably preferred over any other world. Therefore, by fearing that the optimist is right in his claim that this world is the best of all possible worlds, the pessimist incoherently desires the impossible. Whether or not one can explain the incoherence as clearly as I have just done, one laughs at the joke because one senses the underlying incoherence. Or at least that is my theory.

A third example, borrowed from Will Rogers. “To make money in the stock market, you buy a stock when it is low, wait for it to go up, then sell when it is high. If it doesn’t go up, you don’t buy it.” I suggest that the joke is funny because the directionality of time makes it impossible to do something in the present (refrain from buying a stock that has failed to appreciate) that alters the past (one’s having bought that very stock).

Now suppose I have succeeded in showing that the humorousness of these three jokes is traceable to an underlying incoherence. This still leaves us with the question of why incoherence should be funny. My father once said something I took to be just plain stupid: “If I knew I’d get this old, I would have taken care of myself.” But he meant it as a joke. Thus on this occasion I failed to display a sense of humor. But what does one sense when one senses humor? I sensed the incoherence all right, which is why I took my father’s statement to express stupidity. But I didn’t sense the humor. So humorousness must be something in addition to incoherence. There is a missing conceptual ingredient X, which, when added to incoherence, gives us humorousness. But what is X? I have no idea. Being stymied, I stop.