The no true Scot move
Nigel Warburton has a new blog. This post grabbed my attention the other day. It’s something I’ve wondered about often, I think. Is Anthony Grayling right to say that no truly intelligent mind can lack a sense of humour?
This sounds like a case of what Anthony Flew in his book Thinking About Thinking labelled ‘The No True Scotsman Move’. If someone says ‘No Scotsman could commit a gruesome murder’ and then is confronted with evidence that someone who was born in Scotland had committed such a murder, they explalin ‘Ah, but if they committed a murder like that, they’re not a true Scotsman’. Similarly if I manage to dig up some examples of very intelligent people who completely lack a sense of humour, no doubt Anthony Grayling will tell me they are not ‘truly intelligent’. Isn’t it wishful thinking to believe that a sense of humour should be a necessary constituent of intelligence?
Yes, maybe, and yet – and yet I think there’s something in the idea, even if the ‘no truly’ move isn’t quite the right one. No completely or no thoroughly might be a better one. People can be intelligent and yet curiously dense in certain areas – and that does (surely) tend to be part of our notion of their intelligence. A ‘yes but’ kind of thing. Yes but dang she is deaf to social nuances, sort of thing. So with a sense of humour, I think. There is something obtuse about no sense of humour – something, as I said there, dim, point-missing, obtuse, shuttered, blinkered, unobservant. Just not getting it. It’s still possible to be intelligent, but it is a flawed and incomplete kind of intelligence – even, I would claim, more flawed and incomplete than all intelligence naturally is. It’s a conspicuous cognitive flaw in an otherwise intelligent person. Wouldn’t you say? I’m not certain of this, it’s an intuition, but it seems right. Answers on a postcard.
“Answers on a postcard”
Since I have nothing really interesting to say here, can I joke about it?
Maybe. What would you say about having little or no sense of musical pitch? There’s a conspicuous cognitive flaw in an otherwise intelligent person — does it affect one’s idea of the tone-deaf person’s intelligence? If not, should it?
Humour requires the same sort of skills involved in philosophy: critical thinking, awareness of the ambiguities of language, doubt about the abilities of others and oneself and the ability to demolish an opponent with words rather than brute force. There are two sorts of humorists: committed and anarchic. The committed humorist has a well defined point of view and they express their humour by mocking their enemies: Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift are two examples. The anarchic humorist mocks everything, exploits the ambiguities of language and makes surreal juxtapositions: Monty Python and Spike Milligan embody this idea. The committed humorist says, “They’re making a big mistake!” The anarchic says, “We all make mistakes. I’m making a mistake right now, but I’m going to enjoy it!”
Perhaps the distinction you want is between intelligence — which can mean many things, not least the ability to do sums quickly — and wisdom — which is even harder to define, but infinitely more precious. One can certainly be very intelligent, and be a humourless arse, but I think a common sense of what ‘wisdom’ means would preclude such a juxtaposition.
Yes, the christians and the muslims and the communists do this all the time, don’t they?
Yes but Paisley / the pope / Cyril of Alexandria / Dominic / Bernard / Calvin weren’t PROPER christians – WE’RE DIFFERENT!
Yes but Osama / the Mufti / Sufis / Dominic / Shi’a / Sunni / the Mahdi / The Aga Kahn weren’t PROPER muslims – WE’RE DIFFERENT!
Yes but Stalin / Trotski / Mao / Pol Pot / Kim (either) / weren’t PROPER marxists – WE’RE DIFFERENT!
Can I use the word liars here?
Or are they just seriously deluded, to the point where the nice men in white coats need to come calling?
Andy White – an interesting distinction. One of my favourite atand-ups is Alexei Sayle, who subverts everything he chucks at the audience as soon as he’s said it – more so if the audience applaud it enthusiastically, as if he’s constantly demanding ‘Think for yourselves!’. I’ve not seen anyone quite like it, and in my opinion he’s one of the most intelligent comics the UK has produced. He falls into your second category, but seems to keep a cogent political stance underneath it all.
Nick S: You’re right about Sayle. In an interview with Mark Lawson on BBC4 he attributed his tendency to subvert the reflex leftism of 80s alternative comedy to the fact that he was brought up by communist parents but was himself aware of Stalin’s atrocities. However, he’s unsettling as much for his abrasive stage manner as his complex politics.
“One can certainly be very intelligent, and be a humourless arse, but I think a common sense of what ‘wisdom’ means would preclude such a juxtaposition.”
Yes, Dave. In keeping with my 80s theme, Thatcher springs to mind. She was very intelligent but wasn’t habitually funny. Humour is an attribute of wisdom because it gives you the ability to doubt yourself whilst still being able to function. Thatcher never suffered intellectual uncertainty and, notoriously, didn’t understand Monty Python’s parrot sketch.
Humphrey Littleton once ticked off the I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue panel asking for their answers on a postcard, as well as ‘everything else you know’.
Andy: I agree with Nick S that the committed/anarchic distinction is a really interesting one. Is it your own, or has it been made elsewhere? I ask only because I’d love to read more along the same lines.
More generally, does anybody know of any good books or articles about humour? (Sorry for asking an off-discussion question).
Someone once told me that a sense of humour shows a narrowness of mind. That sounds paradoxical but in fact humour is a sense of proportion – a sense of incongruities and if your mind was truly broad it would have no sense of incongruities. “That’s funny,” says a (cheeky) child when hearing a foreign accent or seeing foreign habits, like taking off (or keeping on) shoes when coming inside. Because a child’s mind is necessarily narrow, from lack of experience. An intelligent person entertains ideas hospitably – though they may conclude the sooner this disgusting, crappily behaved idea is kicked outside the better. So can you have high intelligence without a sense of proportion?
Wisdom certainly implies proportion but intelligence does not – can anyone tell me if Stephen Hawking has a sense of humour? Or any other notable physicist, philosopher or mathematician?
Perhaps the true humourist has a sense of metaproportion — moderation in all things, including moderation.
Lots of notable physicists, philosophers and mathematicians have a fully functioning sense of humour. (Stephen Hawking is one, as it happens.)
Yeah – I tend to think of all three as pretty good at the sense of humour thing. The Sokal hoax was not a bad piece of wit!
But – Iris Murdoch for example. I think one reason her novels are so dreadful is the complete absence of sense of humour. If she’d had a sense of humour she would have seen what was bad and risible about them. And Martha Nussbaum – I like her work a lot, mostly, but it has faults that a better sense of humour would, I think, alleviate. She wouldn’t have done that toe-curling thing with the review of Harvey Mansfield’s Masculinity, for instance (remember? describing how a better philosopher would have done the book, a better philosopher who turned out to be a dead ringer for none other than – your humble reviewer?). And A S Byatt – she’s another. (And both Nussbaum and Byatt are fans of Murdoch’s novels – which is very odd, and interesting…) She’s obviously brilliant, and yet – she desperately needs the leavening of humour, to rescue her from her own excesses.
So, G, more germane would be the question has any notable physicist, philosopher or mathematician NOT got a sense of humour?
Has anyone seen the French film Ridicule? When one of the eighteenth century noblemen is trying to describe “humour” as distinct from “wit” – “humour” being an English phenomenon.
English greats that were humourless – Milton, Wordsworth.
I agree about Iris Murdoch – though I think her earliest novel Under the Net has humour – or perhaps it is just high spirits?
I think post-modernism may be described as a home for the humourless in spite of their taste for puns and superior jibing.
Yep, Milton and Wordsworth. Same thing – Wordsworth wouldn’t have fallen into that ghastly awful pompous self-importance if he’d had the leavening of wit. There wouldn’t have been that dreadful moment at Haydon’s dinner (was it Haydon’s? or a different one…anyway) when Keats started to say something in reply to Wordsworth and Mary W stopped him, saying ‘Mr Wordsworth is never interrupted.’ Oh, gawd.
I dunno – I really think Grayling had it right; I think that lack does create a real and significant blind spot, that does detract from intelligence – a blind spot that does amount to a kind of stupidity.
Arguably Jane Austen illustrates this with almost every character. No, I take it back, there’s Fanny Price – but then that’s why Fanny is so awful.
So anyone who is intelligent would be more intelligent if they had a sense of humour. Perhaps “not truly intelligent” can be taken as being “less intelligent than they could have been”.
And is anyone humorous more humorous if they had intelligence? I would have said yes.
Re Jane Austen – her heroines had “judgement” – ie a sense of proportion. Or they gain it, like Emma does. Except Fanny, of course. Did you ever notice that although Fanny disapproved of the theatricals and wouldn’t take part as an actress, she was actually an aider and abetter, as a stand-in and prompter. So her moral stand was a bit weak – like the supplier of weapons to evil governments and terrorist groups.
“the committed/anarchic distinction is a really interesting one. Is it your own, or has it been made elsewhere? I ask only because I’d love to read more along the same lines.”
I think it’s my own distinction, but I’m not claiming that it’s an original one.
“humour is a sense of proportion – a sense of incongruities and if your mind was truly broad it would have no sense of incongruities.”
I think that a mind broad enough would contain many incongruities. The poet Walt Whitman wrote that “I contradict myself” and “I am large..I contain multitudes.” Human nature is a spatchcocked mechanism – it inevitably conflicts with itself. Admittedly, there’s the obtuseness of the narrow-minded that leads to unsophisticated mockery; but there’s also a higher order humour that comes from recognising our fallibility and contingency. An example of the first kind is the racist humour of the sort put about by the likes of Bernard Manning, but the Douglas Adams style of humour about the folly of all kinds of life is on a higher plane.
And did Walt Whitman have any sense of humour? Can I bet he didn’t?
I think you missed my point. Yes, if your mind was broad enough to contain every incongruity it would not contain any humour. A truly broad mind would be truly humourless. Hearing Bill Bailey, say, playing sweeping rock anthems on the cockney joanna would not seem funny – a truly broad mind would see no reason why a song can’t be interpreted on any musical instrument and in any style. The rest of us see a disproportion and incongruity and fall about laughing.
KB Player: I’ve never laughed at a Walt Whitman poem, but your point – if I haven’t missed it again – was that a broad mind can’t see incongruities. Whitman was an intelligent man with the capacity to contain contradictions. I think this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for humour.
I disagree about the Bill Bayley thing. In order to see the incongruity you have to be able to appreciate that different types of music operate in different contexts. It’s an unsophisticated person who listens to musical parodies and doesn’t see the joke. No one should ever do themselves down for laughing at Bill Bailey!
“And is anyone humorous more humorous if they had intelligence? I would have said yes.”
Oh god yes. Is there anything less funny than dumb jokes?
“she was actually an aider and abetter, as a stand-in and prompter”
Sure – but she’s aware of that herself. She’s a pain, Fanny is, but she gets full marks for paying attention. She doesn’t lie to herself. She knows she’s jealous of Mary, for instance.
Actually though – come to think of it – you’re right, that is interesting, because what she aids and abets is Maria’s undoing. However unwillingly, she does her little bit to help Henry destroy Maria’s life. I hadn’t thought of that before. Thanks.
“I’ve never laughed at a Walt Whitman poem, but your point – if I haven’t missed it again – was that a broad mind can’t see incongruities. Whitman was an intelligent man with the capacity to contain contradictions. I think this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for humour.”
Andy White:- A broad mind would see incongruities. In fact that’s what broad minds do. But the very broadest would see none. The very broadest would be insane. Sanity sees limits and stops there.
“I disagree about the Bill Bayley thing. In order to see the incongruity you have to be able to appreciate that different types of music operate in different contexts. It’s an unsophisticated person who listens to musical parodies and doesn’t see the joke. No one should ever do themselves down for laughing at Bill Bailey!”
Anyone who doesn’t laugh fit to be sick at Bill Bailey should be banished from all decent society. But your statement:- “different types of music operate in different contexts” – your mind has stopped there. Why should they? Who has set that limit? Isn’t this a rather Taliban like statement, which says that the only appropriate music is chanting from the Koran or about the Taliban’s heroic deeds? The mind has to narrow at some point, be contained in a bowl instead of spilling all over the floor, if it is going to be of any use.
When I’ve put this idea to people they’ve resisted – “broad” means good and “humour” means good so they must belong together. It is probably just an argument about limits.
OB:- I’m not sure how Fanny aids and abets Maria’s undoing except innocently, by refusing Henry Crawford. But she does help out with the theatricals, is “useful” even if she doesn’t perform and Sir Thomas should have been a bit cross with her though less cross with her than with the others. If she had so thoroughly and properly disapproved of the theatricals she should not have become involved at all.
Well, the theatricals are a big part of the whole seduction of Maria – which is why, even though Fanny is a dreadful prude and bore and whiner, she is in a way right about them. Henry is cruel and destructive.
But, interestingly, she wasn’t really in a position to stay out of them entirely. Mrs Norris would have tormented her past bearing, and so would all the others, and even Edmund would have been less than pleased. She’s entirely dependent and helpless – she’s the poor relation, she’s living on their bounty, she can’t just say ‘No’. She does about marrying Henry, but at the price of complete misery; she couldn’t be expected to go through that merely to keep clear of the theatricals.
Austen sets up her situation beautifully – as she does with all her female protagonists: they all have a great many obstacles to free action.
I concede about Fanny’s helplessness. OB: And it is her “pity and kindheartedness” that has her helping the hopeless Mr Rushworth with his lines. So perhaps I’m too hard on her. And the only time she shows any humour is watching the rest fight for the best parts – “not unamused” (which is as close to hilarity as Fanny can get). In fact Fanny is a convincing portrait of the shy on-looker who sees most of the game. But though she may be convincing she certainly is not likable.
Damn, now I know what I lack – ‘If she had a sense of humour she would know what was bad and risible about her work’.
While sulking here, I compare the ‘No True Scotsman’ gambit with the old group affiliation and projection on out-group behaviour pattern – its a rhetorical encapsulation of it.
Andy White – was wondering last night -has cartoonist Steve Bell actually been funny for twenty years ? I can’t actually remember laughing out loud at one of his strips since Thatcher was in power…
ChrisPer:- my mother was patriotically attached to the city of H. If any particularly bad crime was committed there, she would say that the criminals must have come from somewhere else. It is in fact natural to be prejudiced on the side of your family/nation/political party/religious affiliation. Though there is the Chomskian inverse of always believing the worst of your own nation and the best of any of its opponents.
Natural? You come here and say something’s natural? What are we: Chimps? Nothing humanity has done has been ‘natural’ since we acquired the power of speech and the ability to impute meaning.
Natural! Hah! And that is without responding to the sly elision of a fundamental distinction between a chosen affiliation and the random fact of birthplace.
Dave: sorry natural offended you. Would you say human beings are without natural instincts like the desire for food, sex and to look after their young? I would say it is natural to have a strong emotional attachment to your family and the place where you were born. If you go and live somewhere else you may develop a strong attachment for that place. (You may end up loathing it but then you would leave if you could.) People brought up in a religion are attached to it, so are converts. People can be born into a political party or join one, and to some a party will become their world. A chosen affiliation and a birthplace, in short, have the same capacity for arousing strong feelings of loyalty. So, no, I was not slyly eliding.
As for chimps, the last time I saw one on the telly the poor beast was being encouraged to communicate by touching buttons or cards. It never learned enough language so as to say to its human teacher/tormenter, look, I’ll learn this and then I’ll teach you to swing from branches by your feet.
KB Player wrote: “But your statement:- “different types of music operate in different contexts” – your mind has stopped there. Why should they? Who has set that limit? Isn’t this a rather Taliban like statement, which says that the only appropriate music is chanting from the Koran or about the Taliban’s heroic deeds?”
I’m not saying that only certain types of music are valid, but the limits of appropriateness are set by social convention. There’s a scene in The Simpsons set in church where Bart has substituted the music of Iron Butterfly for the organist’s score. The congregation end up singing “In A Gadda Da Vida”. You don’t have to be religious to find this funny. You just have to know that Christianity and smutty rock music aren’t supposed to mix.
“The mind has to narrow at some point, be contained in a bowl instead of spilling all over the floor, if it is going to be of any use.”
If you mean by this that the mind is supposed to help you cope with life, so you have to at some point make a decision rather than continuing to ponder all viewpoints, then yes I agree. However, the quality of our decision making is improved the more we understand of the relevant views involved.
“A broad mind would see incongruities. In fact that’s what broad minds do. But the very broadest would see none. The very broadest would be insane. Sanity sees limits and stops there.”
No amount of broadness would stop you from seeing the incongruity of believing in, say, both Atheism and Christianity. To believe both would be insane, but to understand both views is broad-minded. Rather than thinking of mind as a vessel that might burst if it’s overfilled, I prefer to use the metaphor of mind as toolbox. The more tools I have, the better I’m able to cope with different forms of life.
“When I’ve put this idea to people they’ve resisted – “broad” means good and “humour” means good so they must belong together.”
I think they belong together because all humour involves a juxtaposition of ideas. You have to be able to entertain at least two ideas to get any joke. The more ideas you know, the greater the number of jokes you can understand. Breadth of knowledge and breadth of humour go together.
KB, I was over-reacting comically, on the assumption that you didn’t really mean it, but perhaps you do. If something is ‘natural’ we must presume it to be universal, or any deviations to be ‘unnatural’. But, to use your example, a parenting instinct is not ‘natural’ in that sense. Many people don’t have it [indeed, to mention your other examples, some people don’t have sexual drives either. Not having a desire for food is rarer, I grant you, but if ‘not starving to death’ is the range of the ‘natural’ I’ll allow it].
It is not ‘natural’ to like where you come from. Many people hate where they come from, and cannot wait to wipe its dust from their feet. I am a Londoner. I loathe London [pace S. Johnson] and would never willingly contemplate living there. Many people brought up in religions rebel passionately against them. Many people hate, or at least despise, their parents, indeed it sometimes seems more the norm than otherwise. Are all these behaviours somehow ‘unnatural’? Can you, in any realistic sense, pathologise them?
KB writes:
Would you say human beings are without natural instincts like the desire for food, sex and to look after their young? I would say it is natural to have a strong emotional attachment to your family and the place where you were born.
KB, of course you are perfectly right. But remember that in our sensitive age the word ‘natural’ has become a kind of N-word, or something like the word ‘mother’ in ‘Brave New World’. It is bad language. It is abusive, insulting, hurtful. To use it is a shameful thing.
Just think of the 0.1% of coprophiliacs, the 0.01% of anorexics, the 0.001% of shoe-fetishists, the 0.0001% of infanticidal parents out there. Can’t you consider their feelings?
Use of the word ‘natural’ in any kind of judgmental sense is … well it’s unnatural
I tend to use the term ‘adaptive’ – less ‘value-laden’, but has much the same information content.
Cathal Copeland:- thanks so much for helping me out with my gaffe. I didn’t know there was another “N” word besides the usual one. I don’t mix in the right circles. As it is evidently a touchy word, perhaps I should use the words “very common” instead. Or “quite often observed?” Or “it happens frequently?”. Or will more “N” epithets be hurled at me like “Naive”, “Nasty”, “Nitwit,” “Non-sophisticated”, “Neo-authoritarian” or “Nihilist”?
“I tend to use the term ‘adaptive’ – less ‘value-laden’, but has much the same information content.”
Ah – that would explain why we keep disagreeing on this. I beg to differ: ‘adaptive’ does not have much the same information content as ‘natural’, and furthermore (or therefore) you misuse it. Adaptive is a really unhelpful word to misuse – it simply creates confusion.
KB, I assume you are aware I was being ironic. Incidentally your comments on humour were some of the brightest stuff I’ve read here for weeks. Keep it up.
Ophelia,
Very briefly (the dinner bell rings; the butler and maidservants await their master):
‘adaptive’ is often useful as a neutral term — it sorts the epistemic wheat from the moralist chaff. When I say that X is maladaptive I am not necessarily disapproving of X — I’m just saying, for example, that wherever there’s too much X going on the breeding population in question may have problems. That’s a statement of fact that is either true or false, not ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
It’s a purely instrumental term — that’s what I like about it. It helps me put my ethics on the doorstep before entering under the roof of the truth-seekers. I’m just doing what comes naturally to a morally skeptical epistemic absolutist.
Cathal, but it’s not useful if you use it inaccurately. At the very least you ought to hedge it, but you slap the word down as if you knew for certain what is adaptive and what isn’t, when in fact you have a drastically oversimplified view of the matter. The way you use it it’s just jargon, and slightly coercive jargon at that, because it looks authoritative but isn’t. That’s a branch of rhetoric.
Being also a very humble person, I gratefully accept your criticisms.
I shall now consider the beam that is in mine own eye before proceeding to behold the motes that are in thine.
KB PLayer, my compliments on your mother!
I like your use of the word ‘natural’ as I think it means ‘this is the way things are, whatever some might suppose they should be’.
And for the alternative reading that natural implies ‘good’, I didn’t take that implication; though of course its true the word can carry that meaning in the right context.
At different times and places, human societies have deemed it ‘natural’ and ‘right’ to, amongst other things, expose unwanted infants at birth, ritually consume the bodies of their enemies, cut out the hearts of sacrificial victims, crucify, enslave, live polygamously, or polyandrously, take hallucinogenic substances, and burn witches [and sodomites, as Kant pointed out on another thread]. And of course, to NOT do any of these things.
In discussing human behaviour, the word ‘natural’ simply does not have any stable normative power, whether you like it or not.
Hmm. Was KB using it normatively, or descriptively? I thought it was the latter –
“It is in fact natural to be prejudiced on the side of your family/nation/political party/religious affiliation.”
There is a fair bit of evidence that would back that up. Robin Dunbar has an interesting explanation of why it’s ‘natural’: it has to do with other minds. If I can remember how it goes, it’s…big brains very expensive, consume mass calories, so need to provide huge competitive advantage to make the cost worthwhile (otherwise wouldn’t exist); what would that be?; the ability to figure out what others are going to do; that requires understanding of other minds; that’s a big piece of learning; it’s a specific stage of human development, before which children just don’t get it. It’s necessary for group cohesion; but alas, with group cohesion you get outgroup uncohesion – you get ‘natural’ hatred of others.
Maybe, but another explanation I have read of big-brain/consciousness evolution relates it to the need to figure out what other people are thinking in order to compete successfully against them in complex social situations — though ‘competing’ also includes co-operating through mutually-advantageous trade, etc. James Shreeve *The Neandertal Enigma*, Penguin, 1995.
One might argue that complex consciousness isn’t necessary to get on with one’s ‘in-group’ — just smelling the same, and waking up next to them every morning, would be a solid grounding. It’s dealing with unknowns that’s the trigger, and those are people it’s explicitly not ‘natural’ to like.
Anyway, I still maintain my essential point — ever since humans learnt to give meanings to things, and thus can be seen to have developed different [albeit often parallel] sets of meanings around their behaviour [and behaviours around those meanings], the word ‘natural’ is out of place in describing this. I don’t think one can use the word of human behaviour without connoting a normative dimension.
Or shall we have a discussion on whether it’s ‘natural’ to imagine gods?
Ah well Dunbar may have included that explanation too; I may have misremembered the finer points.
There is of course an argument, with a lot of evidence, that some human behaviors are universal enough to be considered natural (or ‘natural’). Equally of course, this is highly contested.
“It’s dealing with unknowns that’s the trigger, and those are people it’s explicitly not ‘natural’ to like.”
Right – and it’s natural not to. No? Which is what KB said – isn’t it?
But I do think one can use the word of human behaviour without connoting a normative dimension – although I agree that one has to be explicit, and indeed pretty emphatic, about it.
(Pulling down my rain hood against the storm of definitions and venturing out in cyberspace again.) I was using the term “natural” neutrally if you like. “Natural” does not = “good” though of course it is/was often used so as the Victorians would have said a man was “an unnatural father” if he maltreated his children.
Andy White writes:-
“The more ideas you know, the greater the number of jokes you can understand. Breadth of knowledge and breadth of humour go together.”
There’s an idea that Irish are stupid and Scots and Jews are mean and that is the foundation of many a jest. If you gain the idea that Irish are not stupid and Scots and Jews are not mean you’ve lost a huge number of jokes. Though you may gain some jokes about people who are bigots about Scots, Jews and Irish, I think the loss would be greater than the gain though you could argue that the quality of joke may be greater.
KB Player wrote: “There’s an idea that Irish are stupid and Scots and Jews are mean and that is the foundation of many a jest. If you gain the idea that Irish are not stupid and Scots and Jews are not mean you’ve lost a huge number of jokes.”
I’ll concede that if you no longer believe those stereotypes then you’ll be less inclined to laugh at those kinds of jokes. However, you’ll still be able to understand them as humour. When someone says, “I don’t find racist jokes funny”, what they mean is that they find the joke morally objectionable. By using the word “joke” they’ve recognised humorous intent.
Andy White:-
“The limits of appropriateness are set by social convention. There’s a scene in The Simpsons set in church where Bart has substituted the music of Iron Butterfly for the organist’s score. The congregation end up singing “In A Gadda Da Vida”. You don’t have to be religious to find this funny. You just have to know that Christianity and smutty rock music aren’t supposed to mix.”
Humour then requires social convention and shared cultural standards. The joke above would be unintelligible to a Buddhist and likely to be offensive to a devout Christian. But I think it is more than just knowledge. A social convention has to be felt as well as known.
There is a difference between understanding a joke and laughing at it. To quote a highly intelligent novelist:- “The comic people are ready to challenge a man because he looks grave. ‘You don’t see the witticism, sir?’ ‘No sir, but I see what you meant.’” (George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Book II Chapter XI).
However I can imagine a mind so broad that all ideas get lost in it and never find a friend with whom they can be incongruous.
So your mind is a tool-box –compact, folds out, and there in a row are the socket sets and screwdrivers lined up according to size – now mine is the drawer in the desk where batteries, half used packets of seeds and curtain hooks are all mixed up together.
We agree that understanding a joke is different from laughing at it.
The “Gadda Da Vida” joke would be intelligible to a broad-minded Buddhist who understands something of Christianity and rock music – I know some Buddhists who would qualify. It might even provoke more laughter in a devout Christian because they have a keener sense of the taboo that’s being broken.
A mind so large that the ideas become disconnected has ceased to be a mind. That sounds like split-personality; a lot of sub-minds inhabiting the same brain. Now I see where you’re coming from with the mind as vessel metaphor, so I suppose I’m conceding to your point.
My toolbox mind is more an aspiration than a fact. It’s more like to back of a sofa – full of loose change and biscuit crumbs.
I’m going to have to catch up on my George Eliot and Jane Austen. As an Eng Lit graduate, I’m ashamed of my inability to discuss them with you!
George Eliot is interesting here, because she seems humourless (perhaps, at first glance) but isn’t.
George Eliot’s humour can be lumbering at times and hasn’t got the epigrammatic quality of Jane Austen’s but it is part of her sane and proportioned vision. Here’s a good quote for bloggers:- “very little achievement is required in order to pity another man’s shortcomings.” (Middlemarch, Book II, Chapter XXI). I wonder what a George Eliot blog would be like? With GE as the editor or overseer (or blogger flogger). A scary place to submit, I should think.