Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the MindAn evolutionary and cognitive account of the science behind why we crack up—“one of the most complex and sophisticated humor theories ever presented” (Evolutionary Psychology). Some things are funny—jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed—but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature—aka natural selection—cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
3 The Phenomenology of Humor | 15 |
4 A Brief History of Humor Theories | 37 |
5 Twenty Questions for a Cognitive and Evolutionary Theory of Humor | 57 |
6 Emotion and Computation | 61 |
7 A Mind That Can Sustain Humor | 93 |
8 Humor and Mirth | 117 |
10 Objections Considered | 177 |
11 The Penumbra | 213 |
12 But Why Do We Laugh? | 257 |
13 The Punch Line | 287 |
Epilogue | 301 |
| 305 | |
| 329 | |
9 HigherOrder Humor | 143 |
Other editions - View all
Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind Matthew M. Hurley,Daniel C. Dennett,Reginald B. Adams, Jr. No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
active actually agent already amusing answer appreciation asked assumption audience behavior belief brain cause chapter claim cognitive commitment common computational conception construction course create cultural Dennett depends designed detection discover discovery effects emotions epistemic event example exist expectations experience explain expression fact false feel frame funny further give hand happens human humor idea imagine important incongruity inference instance intentional interpretation involved joke kind knowledge laugh laughter learning least logical look mean mechanism mental space mind mirth mistake natural object occur particular perception perhaps person play pleasure positive possible predict probably problem question reason require response result reward role seems sense similar simply situation social solving species story structure subjects suggests surprise tell term theory things thought tickling tion turn
Bibliographic information
| Title | Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind The MIT Press |
| Authors | Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, Reginald B. Adams, Jr. |
| Publisher | MIT Press, 2011 |
| ISBN | 0262294818, 9780262294812 |
| Length | 374 pages |
| Subjects | › Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition Psychology / Social Psychology |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |