Evolving Thoughts

It is widely understood that philosophers aren't as a rule, intentionally funny. Partly this is because we are often old fogies whose sense of humour was formed in the early Jurassic. Mostly it's because when you deal with the absurd professionally, you tend not to find the funny side of things. But an article in the Guardian lists a prime example of philosophical humour. Get ready...

And this marriage of humour and instruction is what makes the joke I am now going to tell you so wonderful. The logician in question, the late George Boolos, used to give a lecture in which he went through a number of popular phrases that, when analysed in terms of standard logic, mean something quite different from how we normally understand them.

The example everyone remembers is the popular song lyric "everybody loves my baby, but my baby don't love nobody but me". From this, it logically follows that "I am my baby".

By the common consensus of logicians and philosophers everywhere, this really is very funny indeed. And the real beauty is that it is also a brilliant illustration of the semantics of the universal quantifier in standard first-order predicate calculus. But perhaps you'll have to take my word for that.

Not quite in the same region of funny as the Logicians' Sketch in Monty Python, I will agree. How about this joke, as told by Mark Colyvan and rephrased by me from memory:

A decision theory conference and an ethics conference are held at a resort at the same time. The decision theorists and the ethicists turn up at the train station to buy their tickets to the resort. The decision theorists calculate that buying tickets pays off by avoiding fines. So they front up to the ticket vendor and each buys a ticket.

The ethicists, however, send one guy to the ticket office, and he buys one ticket. The decision theorists are confused, and so they watch the ethicists carefully on the train. As the conductor calls out "Tickets please!" in the next carriage, the decision theorists all get out their tickets, but the ethicists all pile into the toilet, and when the conductor arrives in the carriage and repeats his call, they slide one ticket under the door.

The decision theorists are amazed at the payoff - one ticket, no fines. After their respective conferences, the decision theorists send one of their number to the office to buy one ticket. However, the ethicists do not send anyone to buy a ticket. The decision theorists are curious, but they figure they will have a good payoff with the strategy, so they aren't concerned.

When the conductor approaches, all the decision theorists pile into the toilet. One of the ethicists walks up to their door and calls out "Tickets, please!"

It's funnier if you know many ethicists.

Also, there's the wonderful Philosophical Lexicon that Dennett and friends put together some twenty years ago. And David Chalmers keeps a page of philosophical humor.

Any additions?