[lit-ideas] Re: Insults Which Are Humourous (Maybe)
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 09:21:18 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Sun, 9/5/10, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Perhaps two different meanings of the
> word 'humour' confuses the
> issue.
I'd suggest the issue is not a confusion of two meanings of "humour" but of
confusing an "objective" and "subjective" mode of speech (as it were).
>There is the activity that aims to create a
> specific response
> in an audience, and then there is that specific
> response.
The first, we might say, is intentional or intended humour, the second the
response (which may be to find some intended humour not funny, or to find some
unintended humour in something).
>One can
> recognize that someone is engaged in the activity of
> humour, but not
> find the joke humorous.
The first is, we might say, recognising that - objectively - someone is
"engaged in the activity of humour", even though - subjectively - the joke
escapes us.
> I can see a particular
> response in others,
> but I don't have that response.
Yes.
>We can also recognize
> situations
> where someone is not trying to engage in humour, but find
> the
> situation humorous.
Yes. (Indeed, unintended humour, a la Candid Camera participants, can be
amongst the the funniest).
> Something being humorous, then,
> is independent of
> the fact of there being someone engaged in the activity of
> humour.
Not necessarily: it depends whether we cast this assertion in an 'objective' or
'subjective' mode of understanding. In the 'subjective' mode we may find
something humourous [e.g Mrs.Thatcher being ill on a Far East podium] even
though she was not intending, subjectively, to engage "in the activity of
humour" by suddenly swooning, collapsing and sicking up. But, unintentional as
her humourous activity was from her 'subjective' POV, we may still say she was
- objectively, albeit unwittingly - "engaged in the activity of humour":- it
just is, in fact, funny to watch her; and, in this 'objective' sense, the
"something...humourous" is not independent of "there being someone engaged",
albeit unwittingly, "in the activity of humour".
> One can say 'He was being humorous, but I failed to
> recognize the
> humour' if 'being humorous' refers to the activity of
> humour.
Yes, where "being humourous" is an 'objective mode' of speech re his intented
"activity" and "failed to recognise the humour" is a 'subjective mode' of
speech re my subjective appreciation of whether it was funny or not. But not so
where the above assertion is construed either in the 'objective' or the
'subjective' mode throughout: in either case it then becomes contradictory
(leaving aside past tense issues such as "He _was_...I _failed_" being
non-contradictory since both are compatible with my since not failing to see
the humour): i.e. (1) He was, I saw, "being humourous" but I also failed to see
that he was objectively so being; (2) I, subjectively, found him "humourous"
but didn't.
> One cannot say 'I found his jokes humorous but didn't get
> the humour'.
Not if the mode is entirely 'subjective' throughout. But one can say this,
without contradiction, if the assertion is contrued as involving a switch
between 'objective' and 'subjective' modes. (As per above).
Here's a puzzle from the law of attempting the impossible.
A attempts x.
A (subjectively) believes to do x is to do y.
But (objectively) to do x is not to do y.
Has A attempted y?
Consider two cases:-
1.
(a) x = taking a white powder into the country.
(b) y = taking heroin into the country.
2.
(a) x = sticking pins in a voodoo doll while reciting a name
(b) y = bringing about, or hastening, the death of the person named.
Instinct would say, for many of us, that in case 1., A has attempted to import
heroin (imagine the importer is only wrong about the white powder because
police have intercepted the heroin and substituted something else) but in case
2. A has not attempted murder - at least as the law finds people guilty of
attempts in countries where voodoo is seen as mere superstition.
Yet if anyone on the list can unpick a logic here they will surely be doing
better than H.L.A. Hart in one of his celebrated essays.
Btw, P's central criticism of "On Certainty" is that Wittgenstein, by his
approach, confines himself to "subjective knowledge" and therefore fails to see
how the existence and role of "objective knowledge" completely changes the
epistemic picture.
Donal
Under grey skies
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