February 2006
February 2006
Not so deep thoughts about humor
John Perry
27
Feb 2006
Why do birds fly? Because they don't like to walk. That was a joke made up by my granddaughter Erin when she was three. She had learned the form of one kind of joke, without quite mastering the part about being funny. She made up jokes non-stop for about three hours, most of them even less funny than the above, regaling those trapped in the car with her, while turning blue from laughing so hard at them herself.
Read moreThoughts on the Doubling of Consciousness
John Perry
06
Feb 2006
We all carry around two self-conceptions. Imagine having amnesia. The amnesiac knows whose mouth he has to put food in to relieve his hunger; he knows that things detected visually are things that he sees; he knows that the aches he feels belong to his body. So, in one sense, he knows who he is; his most basic self-concept, as the person whose pains he feel, whose hunger he can relieve by eating, whose environment he learn about by the deliverance of sense, remains.
Read moreWe need your help!
Philosophy Talk
27
Feb 2006
We at Philosophy Talk are proud to have offered something uniquely valuable to the radio world over the past two and a half years. It's been an incredible adventure. When we started, many people in radio took our ideas with a very large grain of salt. "Philosophy on the Radio?" they asked incredulously. "Two academics as co-hosts? A stream of professional thinkers, rather than journalists or politicians or entertainers as your guests?" "It will never work!" "No one will ever listen!"
Read moreEducated Insolence
Guest Contributor
27
Feb 2006
Stand-up comics often bemoan the fact that "everyone's a f**king comedian!", and its true: every one appreciates humor (to some degree) and most are capable of generating some form of spontaneous humor. But this very ubiquity makes humor harder, rather than easier, to understand formally, since humor assumes many guises and operates with subtle differences in myriad contexts.
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