Prosecuting the Case against Clewis
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
Oppression, Subversive Humor, and Unstable Politics
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
This essay argues that humor can be used as an unstable weapon against oppressive language and concepts. Drawing from radical feminist Marilyn Frye, I discuss the difficulty of challenging systematic oppression from within and explore the capabilities of humor for this task. This requires expanding Cynthia Willett’s and Julie Willett’s approach to ...
All in Good Taste
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
A Kernel of Truth: Outlining an Epistemology of Jokes
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
I propose the Shared Presupposition Norm of Joking (SPNJ) as a constitutive norm of joke-telling. This norm suggests that a person should only tell a joke if they believe their audience shares the presuppositions—both explicit beliefs and implicit inferential connections—upon which the joke turns. Without this shared understanding, the audience wou...
Is Kant Seriously Funny?
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
Artificial Intelligence, Phenomenology, and The Molyneux Problem
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
What's the Deal with Sophists? Critical Thought and Humor in Ancient Philosophy and Contemporary Comedy
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
While committed to the argumentative and reasoned discourse recognizable in the work of contemporary professional philosophers, the actual practice that both Socrates and Diogenes routinely engaged in was in many ways more similar to stand-up and other forms of contemporary performative comedy. This paper analyzes the commonalities between Socrates...
Understanding Humor: Four Conceptual Approaches to the Elusive Subject
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
This article discusses four ways of understanding the concept of humor: 1) in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, as 2) a cluster concept, 3) an interpretive concept, and 4) a dual character concept. We peruse both historical and contemporary research on humor, but instead of asking “What is humor?,” we draw conclusions regarding what hum...
Clewis on Kant’s Humor
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
Humor and the Arts: Taking Kant Seriously
Published in The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook
