The comedy keeps coming

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but while we’re on the subject of humor, here’s another mistake that is often made in discussions of it: failing to identify precisely which aspect of the phenomenon of humor a theory is (or is best interpreted as) trying to explain.  For instance, this is sometimes manifest in lists of the various “theories of humor” put forward by philosophers over the centuries.

In my previous post, I mentioned (and tentatively advocated) the incongruity theory, according to which we find something funny when it involves some kind of anomalous juxtaposition or combination of incompatible elements.  Other examples would be the superiority theory, which holds that finding something funny involves a feeling of superiority over and contempt for others; and the release theory, which holds that we find something funny when it involves release of tension or pent-up feelings.  (There are several other theories too, but I’m not going to rehearse them all -- you get the idea.)

Now, Aristotle and Aquinas are sometimes represented as putting forward yet another theory of humor, called the play theory.  The basic idea is conveyed by Aquinas as follows:

[J]ust as weariness of the body is dispelled by resting the body, so weariness of the soul must needs be remedied by resting the soul: and the soul's rest is pleasure... Consequently, the remedy for weariness of soul must needs consist in the application of some pleasure, by slackening the tension of the reason's study. Thus… it is related of Blessed John the Evangelist, that when some people were scandalized on finding him playing together with his disciples, he is said to have told one of them who carried a bow to shoot an arrow. And when the latter had done this several times, he asked him whether he could do it indefinitely, and the man answered that if he continued doing it, the bow would break. Whence the Blessed John drew the inference that in like manner man's mind would break if its tension were never relaxed.

Now such like words or deeds wherein nothing further is sought than the soul's delight, are called playful or humorous. Hence it is necessary at times to make use of them, in order to give rest, as it were, to the soul. (Summa Theologiae II-II.168.2)

While excess is possible here as elsewhere, Aquinas is clear that deficiency vis-à-vis humor can even be at least mildly sinful:

In human affairs whatever is against reason is a sin. Now it is against reason for a man to be burdensome to others, by offering no pleasure to others, and by hindering their enjoyment… [A] man who is without mirth, not only is lacking in playful speech, but is also burdensome to others, since he is deaf to the moderate mirth of others. Consequently they are vicious, and are said to be boorish or rude… (Summa Theologiae II-II.168.4)

You might say that for the Angelic Doctor, “chillaxing” can be positively virtuous (as opposed to neutral, let alone bad).  And since humor facilitates chillaxing, humor can be virtuous.

Now, this is often discussed as if it were a rival to theories of humor like the incongruity theory, the superiority theory, etc.  But it seems to me that that is not the case.  For Aristotle and Aquinas are simply not addressing the same question those other theories are concerned with.  Those theories are addressing the question of what makes something funny, of why we find it humorous.  But the “play theory” of Aristotle and Aquinas is not trying to explain what makes something funny.  Rather, it is explaining the benefits of humor in human life, its function in facilitating our psychological well-being.  You might say that the incongruity theory, the superiority theory, etc. are theories about the formal cause of jokes and other forms of humor, whereas Aristotle and Aquinas are concerned with the final cause of jokes and other forms of humor.  They are saying, in effect: “Whatever the factor is whose presence causes us to find certain things to be funny -- and we’re not addressing that -- finding things to be funny has an important function of facilitating relaxation of mind.”

To be sure, writers on humor sometimes point out that one can combine different theories of humor, but noting that in this case the theories in question are addressing entirely different aspects of the phenomenon -- a difference which, again, can be characterized in terms of the traditional and independently motivated distinction between formal and final causes -- allows for greater conceptual precision than just averring that more than one theory may contain elements of truth. 

Take another example, from Jim Holt’s little book Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes (which is great, by the way).  Holt reports on a 1998 discovery by UCLA researchers that, by stimulating a patient’s brain, the patient can be made suddenly to find all sorts of ordinary and unremarkable things funny.  Holt worries:

If, given the application of a little current to a spot in the brain, absolutely everything becomes invested with risible incongruity -- becomes, that is, a joke -- then how can humor pretend to be an aesthetic category worthy of philosophical analysis? (Baudelaire observed that the same effect could be produced by hashish, but never mind.) (p. 122)

As that last line (and the overall tone of his book) indicate, Holt isn’t really all that worried by this finding, so I hesitate to attribute to him any weighty thesis about the implications of neuroscience for the philosophy of humor.  But (given the neuromania rampant today) someone might seriously think that the finding in question somehow undermines the point of philosophizing about humor.  And as with other instances of neuromania, such a conclusion would be fallacious.  For here too, we have a claim which is not actually in competition with anything the traditional theories of humor are saying. 

For one thing, if the traditional theories are addressing formal and final causes, you might say that what the researchers uncovered were material and efficient causes.  In particular, they uncovered (some of) the material and efficient causes of the psychological state of being amused.  By contrast, the play theory is addressing the final cause of that psychological state (viz. to facilitate relaxation of mind), whereas the incongruity theory, say, is addressing the formal cause of the psychological state (viz. a perception of something as incongruous). 

For another thing, we need to distinguish between normal and deviant cases.  Neurologically induced hallucinations can tell you something about normal vision, since there are features they have in common, but it would be absurd to conclude from this that normal vision can be assimilated to hallucination.  The differences between the cases are hardly less important than the similarities.  By the same token, it would be absurd to suppose that all cases of finding something funny can be assimilated or reduced to what is going on in the case of a patient whose brain is being stimulated in such a way that he ends up finding all sorts of unremarkable things amusing.  This is a highly abnormal case, and precisely as such, it can only tell us so much about the normal cases.  Yet it is the normal cases that the traditional theories (the incongruity theory, play theory, etc.) are concerned with.

Of course, there are all sorts of nuances and qualifications that a systematic application of the Aristotelian four-causal approach would have to take account of, and I’m not addressing all that here.  Anyway, as in philosophy more generally, so too in even so esoteric a subfield as the philosophy of humor, the four causes continue to have application.  Funny, no?