A group for document sharing and discussion about philosophy in the analytic tradition. (Including the history and future of analytic philosophy)
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Chris A. Kramer deposited The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 2 months ago
People can laugh at almost anything. What’s the deal with that? What makes something funny? This essay reviews some theories of what it is for something to be funny. Each theory offers insights into this question, but no single approach provides a comprehensive answer.
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Joshua Pillows deposited Answering the Transcendental Criticisms of Van Til’s TAG in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 3 months, 1 week ago
The present study has been primarily provoked from the inadequacy of both late and present presuppositionalists to sufficiently answer or refute the more philosophical, transcendental challenges levelled against Van Til’s Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (hereafter TAG). Given this shortcoming—which, with it, comes an atm…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited Is Laughing at Morally Oppressive Jokes Like Being Disgusted by Phony Dog Feces? An Analysis of Belief and Alief in the Context of Questionable Humor in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 3 months, 3 weeks ago
In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be…[Read more]
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Lajos Brons deposited A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 9 months, 2 weeks ago
In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic vie…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited Subversive Humor in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 6 months ago
I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to
raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors
of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people
up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious…[Read more] -
Chris A. Kramer deposited The Playful Thought Experiments of Louis CK in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
It is trivially true that comedians make jokes and thus are not serious; they are “just playing.” But watching Louis CK, especially his performances in Chewed Up, Shameless, and Hilarious, it is evident that he has more in mind than simply getting his audience to frivolously guffaw. I will make the case that this is so given the content of som…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited Is Laughing at Morally Oppressive Jokes Like Being Disgusted by Phony Dog Feces? An Analysis of Belief and Alief in the Context of Questionable Humor in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited Mark Twain’s Serious Humor and That Peculiar Institution: Christianity in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
According to Manuel Davenport, “The best humorists–Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, and Mort Sahl–share [a] mixture of detachment and desire, eagerness to believe, and irreverence concerning the possibility of certainty. And when they become serious about their convictions–as Twain did about colonialism…they cease to be humorous”. I agree…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited I Laugh Because it’s Absurd: Humor as Error Detection in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
This chapter will focus on the overlap and benefits of a humorous and philosophical attitude toward the world and our place in it. The first part of this chapter’s title borrows from Kierkegaard and before him the Christian apologist Turtullian, who once quipped about the central contradictory tenets of Christianity, in putatively ironic f…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited Incongruity and Seriousness in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
In the first part of this paper, I will briefly introduce the concept of incongruity and its relation to humor and seriousness, connecting the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer and the contemporary work of John Morreall. I will reveal some of the relations between Schopenhauer’s notion of “seriousness” and the existentialists such as Jean Paul Sartr…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited World-Traveling, Double Consciousness, and Laughter in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
In this paper I borrow from Maria Lugones’ work on playful ” world-traveling ” and W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of ” double consciousness ” to make the case that humor can facilitate an openness and cooperative attitude among an otherwise closed, even adversarial audience. I focus on what I call ” subversive ” humor, that which is employed by or on…[Read more]
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Chris A. Kramer deposited Moral Imaginative Resistance to Heaven: Why the Problem of Evil is so Intractable in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 7 months ago
The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven.…[Read more]
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Masahiro Morioka deposited Manga Introduction to Philosophy: An Exploration of Time, Existence, the Self, and the Meaning of Life in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 8 months ago
This is perhaps the world’s first book in which a philosopher himself illustrates his own philosophical investigation into hard problems on time, being, solipsism, and life, in the form of “Manga.” This book was originally published in Japanese in 2013 and translated into English by Robert Chapeskie in 2021.
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Lodewijk Muns deposited Fiction, Truth, and Lies: The Nonassertion Theory, Quotation, and Music as Fiction in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 1 year, 8 months ago
The Nonassertion Theory of Fiction implies that fictional discourse is quoted discourse. It can stand up against the critique in Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe, and avoids the undesirable consequences of that theory. The possibility of hearing music as discursive justifies thinking of (some) music as fiction, against Walton’s reservations.
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Lodewijk Muns deposited Musical Quotation and the ‘Use-Mention’ Distinction in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 2 years, 12 months ago
Studies of musical quotation generally downplay the possible parallels with linguistic quotation, and ignore the specialized debate around quotation in analytical philosophy. Basic to this debate is the idea that we can articulate (‘mention’) x without truly saying (‘using’) x. A quoted expression is set apart within the regular discourse in whic…[Read more]
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Lajos Brons deposited Aphantasia, SDAM, and Episodic Memory in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 3 years, 3 months ago
Episodic memory (EM) involves re-experiencing past experiences by means of mental imagery. Aphantasics (who lack mental imagery) and people with severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) lack the ability to re-experience, which would imply that they don’t have EM. However, aphantasics and people with SDAM have personal and affective…[Read more]
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Lajos Brons deposited Philosophy of mental time — A theme introduction in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 3 years, 3 months ago
(First paragraphs.) — The notion of “mental time” refers to the experience and awareness of time, including that of past, present, and future, and that of the passing of time. This experience and awareness of time raises a number of puzzling questions. How do we experience time? What exactly do we experience when we experience time? Do we actua…[Read more]
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Lajos Brons deposited Patterns, noise, and beliefs in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 3 years, 5 months ago
In “Real Patterns” Daniel Dennett developed an argument about the reality of beliefs on the basis of an analogy with patterns and noise. Here I develop Dennett’s analogy into an argument for descriptivism, the view that belief reports do no specify belief contents but merely describe what someone believes, and show that this view is also supported…[Read more]
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Martin Boehnert deposited Linguistisch-philosophische Untersuchungen zu Plausibilität: Über kommunikative Grundmuster bei der Entstehung von wissenschaftlichen Tatsachen in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 4 years, 9 months ago
Plausibilität spielt in allen Wissenschaftskulturen eine gewichtige Rolle – ob implizit oder explizit. Auffällig ist jedoch, dass es keiner spezifisch geschulten Kompetenz oder der Vermittlung eigenständiger Fähigkeiten bedarf, um einen Sachverhalt als “plausibel” zu beurteilen, während bei verwandten Begriffen wie etwa “logisch” je nach den meth…[Read more]
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James McElvenny deposited Linguistic Aesthetics from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century: The Case of Otto Jespersen’s “Progress in Language” in the group
Analytic Philosophy on Humanities Commons 4 years, 10 months ago
From the early nineteenth century up until the first half of the twentieth century, many leading scholars in the emerging field of linguistics were occupied with what would today be considered a kind of linguistic typology. The various classifications of languages they proposed were generally intertwined with speculation about the “racial” tra…[Read more]
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