You've Got To Be Kidding!

How Jokes Can Help You Think

John Capps, Donald Capps

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444356205
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Logik in der Philosophie

You've Got to Be Kidding!: How Jokes Can Help You Think is a thoughtful and accessible analysis of the ways in which jokes illustrate how we think critically, and how the thinking process goes awry in everyday human situations.

• Uses jokes to illustrate the various mistakes or fallacies that are typically identified and discussed in courses on critical reasoning
• Provides an effective way to learn critical thinking skills since jokes often describe real-life situations where it really matters whether a person thinks well or not
• Demonstrates how philosophy is actually very practical and clearly related to real- life human experiences
• Explains how developing good reasoning habits can make a real difference in all aspects of one's life

1

Why Thinking Critically Is Important

Critical thinking is about examining the reasons we give for what we believe. It is also about communicating in a clear, understandable, and reasonable way. Technically speaking, critical thinking is rational thinking. The word “rational” implies the ability to reason logically and usually means that one avoids emotionalism, i.e., appealing to one’s feelings or intuitions as the basis for a particular belief. In practical terms, critical thinking involves being “reasonable,” or having defensible reasons for what we believe and say. The word “reasonable” may imply the use of practical reason in making decisions and choices, and in this sense, critical thinking is relevant to solv-ing problems. In this book, we will be using both terms – “rational” and “reasonable”– depending on the context.

We will also use the word “irrational” to refer to beliefs and actions that are illogical. Sometimes the word “irrational” is used as a synonym for saying or doing something in a strongly emotional manner. We will use the word “irrational” here in the more limited sense of engaging in faulty reasoning. This means that just because someone speaks or writes in a highly emotional manner does not necessarily mean that the belief itself is irrational, and, conversely, merely because someone speaks in a calm and measured way does not necessarily mean that the belief expressed is rational. The “emotionalism” that is being called into question here is where one appeals to one’s emotions and, in effect, ignores or rejects evidence that challenges the validity of the belief in question.

Jokes make good illustrations of the logical fallacies that are a regular feature of critical thinking courses. Figuring out which logical fallacy a joke illustrates can be a valuable exercise in critical thinking. We will present jokes that illustrate these fallacies in chapters 2-5. We realize that by using jokes to illustrate critical thinking we risk undermining the importance of critical thinking, but we hope that this illustrative use of jokes will enable our readers to take the goals of critical thinking even more seriously than they might otherwise and also to get the informal fallacies better fixed in their minds than would otherwise be the case. If critical thinking is about examining the reasons people have for what they believe, then jokes are an especially engaging and memorable way of showing how these reasons can fall short. And if critical thinking is about being able to communicate in ways that are clear, understandable and reasonable, this often means avoiding the logical fallacies that create confusion and undermine honest dialogue, and because jokes commit these fallacies, they can help us learn where our communicating goes wrong.

The Relevance of Context

In this chapter we will discuss several aspects of what is involved in thinking and behaving in a rational manner. One of these concerns the issue of con text. A belief or behavior can make sense in one context but not make sense in another. Here’s an example of a joke in which someone does something that would be perfectly rational in another context but is essentially irrational in the context in which he currently finds himself:

Two guys are walking down the street when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash. Just then one guy turns to the other and hands him a bill. “Here’s that $20 I owe you,” he says.

It’s doubtful that anyone would ever really pay back a debt in this way. But the joke illustrates the incongruity between the guy’s rational behavior –paying back a loan – and the context in which he pays it back. He suddenly realizes that, since he’s being robbed anyway, he might as well pay off a debt at the same time. Here’s a joke that plays on the same incongruity:

A New York cabbie is cruising near 5th Avenue when he picks up a man who wants to go to the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. After a great deal of haggling the cabbie agrees to drive the man to Chicago, which takes them out of Manhattan, into New Jersey, across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, and finally many hours later onto Lake Shore Drive to the Palmer House. The cabbie drives up to the main entrance, the man gives the cabbie several hundred dollars to cover the ride, and opens the door and gets out. Just then two women slide into the backseat and one says, “We want to go to Shea Stadium.” “No way, lady,” the cabbie replies, “I don’t go to Queens.”

What the cabbie tells the lady makes sense to him – “I limit myself to Manhattan”–but it doesn’t make much sense in a context where he is dead heading back to New York City from Chicago.

Differentiating the Rational from the Irrational

As these two examples show, jokes can upset our intuitions about what is rational and what is irrational. In the crazy sorts of situations jokes describe, it isn’t always clear what is rational or irrational. Thus, jokes can help us recognize that we don’t always have a clear grasp on what is rational. They are often a gentle reminder that we aren’t always good judges of what is rational or irrational. Take this joke:

Two friends decide to take an expensive fishing trip to Montana but after a week of fishing they only manage to catch one fish. So, on the way home one friend says to the other, “The way I figure it, that fish cost us $5,000.” “Yeah,” his friend replies, “Good thing we didn’t catch more.”

Here the irrationality is obvious and apparent. The second guy’s reply might sound rational at first but it doesn’t take more than a second to realize it isn’t. Someone who says, “The guy’s right. Two fish would cost $10,000” doesn’t get the fact that his thinking isn’t rational. Here’s another one:

A guy was hired to paint the line down the center of the road. The first day he managed to paint two miles, and his boss was very pleased. The next day he painted only 200 yards, but his boss thought he’d probably worked too hard the first day and needed to take it easier the second day. But on the third day he was only able to paint twenty feet. The boss called him into the office and demanded an explanation. The guy replied, “Well, you see it’s getting so darned far to walk all the way back to the paint bucket.”

Here, too, the irrationality is obvious. It also has practical consequences. Because he acted irrationally he’ll probably lose his job. In real life the irrationality is usually more subtle but there are still practical consequences. So we should care about being rational because irrational thinking can have negative practical consequences.

One way of being irrational is to believe something that is obviously false. Say that two guys are hiking in the Rockies and one says to the other, “I’ll bet you 10 bucks that I can jump across that 50-foot ravine,” and the other guy replies, “You’re on.” So the first guy leaps to his death. As he falls, he might shout, “The joke’s on you because I don’t even have ten bucks!” But that’s irrelevant. Because it’s obviously impossible to leap across a 50-foot ravine, it is irrational to believe that one can. On the other hand, believing that he can leap across an 8-foot ravine is certainly conceivable, especially with a running start. It’s even possible that believing he can do it would make a crucial difference to his success. But acting on an obviously false belief is irrational, and we shouldn’t be surprised if it has negative consequences.

Another way of being irrational is to believe or say things that are contradictory. This can also have practical consequences. Here’s an example:

The manager of a baseball team went to his doctor to get an ulcer treated. “Remember” the doctor told him, “Don’t get excited, don’t get angry, and forget all about baseball when you’re off the field. Try to remember it’s just a game.” “Thanks, Doc, I’ll follow your advice.” “Good. I’ll see you in a month to find out how you’re doing.” As the patient heads to the door, the doctor says, “Oh, one more thing: why the hell did you let the pitcher bat for himself last night when you had men on first and third?”

Here the doctor contradicts himself and the patient has every right to accuse him of being irrational. Moreover, the doctor has spoiled whatever good he hoped to do.

Most of us try to be rational, at least, when we want others to think we know what we’re talking about. Nearly everyone who holds contradictory beliefs thinks he or she is being rational: like the fisherman, the painter, and the doctor, it just hasn’t dawned on them that they are actually thinking irrationally. So we aren’t always good judges of whether we are rational or not. Jokes are one way of keeping this in mind.

Bob received a parrot for his birthday. The parrot was fully grown, with a bad attitude and worse vocabulary. Every other word was an expletive, and the parrot was constantly cursing and swearing. Bob tried to change the bird’s attitude by setting a good example, but the bird continued to swear as much as ever. This went on for several months until finally, in a moment of desperation, Bob put the parrot in the freezer. For a few minutes he heard the bird squawking and cursing – and then suddenly it went quiet. Bob was afraid he had actually harmed the parrot and he quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot stepped out onto Bob’s extended arm and said, “I’m sorry that I have offended you with my language and actions and I ask for your forgiveness. I will endeavor to correct my behavior.” Bob was astonished at the bird’s change in attitude and was about to ask what had caused such a drastic change when the parrot said: “Sir, may I ask what the chicken did?”

To the parrot, his change of behavior is based on a rational consideration –that Bob put the chicken in the freezer to punish him and that from the looks of it the chicken’s offense was a lot greater than his own. Yet he makes an inferential mistake that is fundamentally irrational. Here’s another example:

A ventriloquist is doing a show in an out-of-the-way place and as part of his act he makes several jokes insulting the local residents. Finally a man in the audience who can’t take it any more stands up. He shouts,”Hey! You on stage! You’ve been making fun of us all night! We ain’t stupid, you know!” The ven triloquist responds, “Hey, relax, they’re just jokes!” “I’m not talking to you,” the man shouts back, “but to that little smart-ass sitting on your knee!”

Here the man in the audience makes a reasonable claim: “We ain’t stupid, you know!” Unfortunately, he undermines his claim because he doesn’t know how ventriloquism works. It may interest the reader to know that jokes about the low intelligence of other persons tend to support the theory held by Plato and Aristotle that humor derives from our feelings of superiority over other people or over ourselves at some earlier point in time. They may have been influenced by jokes about the stupidity of the Boeotians, the rustic peasant neighbors of Athens (Davies 1998, p. 11). Jokes about otherwise intelligent persons who say and do irrational things tend to support the theory held by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer that humor derives from situations where something occurs that clashes with what we would have expected in a particular set of circumstances. See Morreall (1987).

Finally, it’s worth noting that despite the tendency of jokes to operate within a general content or framework of absurdity (see Cohen 1999, pp. 45–68), jokes actually depend on established standards of rationality. If there weren’t such standards, and if jokes did not recognize that such stand ards exist, jokes that employ faulty reasoning would not be jokes. Their incongruous quality depends on the existence of such standards and the ability to “get” a joke often depends on one’s ability to recognize how one or another of these standards is being violated by the joke.

Rationality and Acting Prudentially

The ability to distinguish between the rational and the irrational is an important aspect of critical thinking. Another is the ability to distinguish between the rational and the prudential. If acting rationally means that one is able to make use of practical reasoning in making decisions, choices, and the like, it makes a certain kind of sense to say that rational thinking tends to be prudential thinking, i.e., exercising sound judgment as far as desirable outcomes are concerned. In fact, there is a sense in which rational thinking maybe defined or at least understood as prudential thinking. But this association of rational and prudential thinking raises certain questions in situations where there can be honest doubt or uncertainty as to what, in fact, is the most prudential decision or choice.

Here’s an example:

An angel appears at a faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behavior, the Lord will reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom, or beauty. Without hesitating, the dean selects infinite wisdom. “Done!” says the angel, and disappears in a cloud of smoke and a bolt of lightning. Now, all heads turn toward the dean, who sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. One of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.” The dean sighs and says, “I should have taken the money.”

The dean’s decision to choose infinite wisdom was a rational one. After all, a major part of his job is to make wise decisions, so we can easily under stand why he would have chosen infinite wisdom over infinite wealth and infinite beauty, and to have made this decision rather effortlessly. Viewed from the perspective of his position as dean, this decision was also a prudential one. Having infinite wisdom will make him a good and effective dean. Then, however, the very acquisition of infinite wisdom causes him to second-guess the decision: he should have opted instead for infinite wealth. From the perspective of his personal well-being, this probably would have been the more prudent thing to have chosen. Of course, one or another of his colleagues might choose to challenge this way of thinking: “The greatest philosophers in the history of humankind have chosen wisdom over wealth.” On the other hand, this challenge would not get them very far because the dean could respond, “That’s what I used to think before I received the gift of infinite wisdom.” Most importantly for our purposes, the joke illustrates the fact that (1) we need to distinguish between the rational and the prudent because sometimes the most rational decision is not the most prudent; and (2) there may be circumstances in which prudential outcomes compete with one another. One thing we can probably all agree upon is that the dean would not have been acting rationally or prudently if he had chosen infinite beauty. In fact, the very imprudence of such a decision would be virtually tantamount to saying that his decision was irrational.

Having Good Reasons for What We Believe

Critical thinking involves having good reasons for what we believe. It also involves being able to tell if someone else has good reasons for what he or she believes. If good reasons for either are lacking, we may infer that the beliefs are irrational. The following joke is illustrative:

A guy walks into a bar and asks, “Anyone know what time it is?” One of the patrons sitting at the end of the bar says, “Can’t say for sure but I do know it ain’t seven o’clock.” “How do you know that?” “ ‘Cause I promised my wife I’d be home by then, and I ain’t there.”

Obviously, the second guy doesn’t have a good reason to believe it’s not seven o’clock. His belief is based on a faulty assumption. The faulty assump tion is, “If it’s seven o’clock then I must be home.” What makes it faulty is that it is based on the guy’s belief that he kept his promise to his wife. There may be circumstances when the same assumption would be valid, for exam ple, when spoken by someone who obsessively follows a set schedule. As for the first guy, it would be irrational for him to believe the other guy. There’s a chance that it isn’t seven o’clock, but the other guy’s grounds for believing it isn’t seven o’clock are spurious and the first guy should recognize that this is the case.

Here’s another example:

An elderly woman was afraid to fly to visit her family because she was afraid that there would be a bomb on board. Her family tried to convince her that the risk was actually very small and to prove their point they per suaded her to consult an actuary. “What are the chances of there being a bomb on a plane?” she asked. “Very small,” said the actuary, “about one in ten thousand.” “And what are the chances of there being two bombs on a plane?” “Even smaller” the actuary replied, “Something like one in a hundred million.” So after that the elderly woman was happy to fly, as long, that is, as she brought a bomb on the plane with her.

Here the error in her thinking is the fact that by bringing her own bomb the elderly woman hasn’t lessened the odds of there being another bomb on board: it is still 1 in 10,000.

Beliefs Have Practical Consequences

Like many of the previous jokes, these jokes about the guy in the bar who tells the other guy what time it is and the woman who carries a bomb onto the plane have practical implications. If the guy who asks what time it is actually believed the other guy, his belief in the reliability of the other guy’s answer could have negative consequences. If the woman tries to bring a bomb on the plane, we can be quite sure that she will not be permitted to fly which would, of course, reduce the risks of flying to 0 percent but the odds of being placed in detention to 100 percent. So these jokes illustrate the fact that what we believe and our grounds for doing so have important practical implications. This is because our beliefs guide our actions, and if our beliefs are faulty then our actions are likely to be faulty as well. If we act on false or unsupported beliefs then our actions are less likely to achieve their goals. Here’s an example:

A wife tells her husband, “I think the baby is coming. We’ve got to get to the hospital. There’s no time to lose!” Her husband leaps to his feet, goes to the door and as he runs out of the house he shouts to his wife, “It’s rush hour and traffic’s gonna be heavy. So let’s take both cars so at least one of us will get there on time!”

While it may make sense to take two cars in some situations, as when a wife and husband plan to leave a party at different times, it’s irrational to do so when the wife is in labor. It won’t help if he gets there first because he is not the one who is having the baby, and if the baby begins to arrive while his wife is en route to the hospital, she will be in the impossible situation of driving and giving birth at the same time, and her husband won’t be there to assist her. If the husband actually drives off without her, his irrational thinking could have disastrous consequences.

Similarly, immoral and unethical behavior is often the result of irrationality. Although it’s true that some people act in ways that are self-consciously or deliberately immoral, most people act immorally because they fail to think critically. They maybe ignorant of the consequences of their actions or they may not be aware of particular matters of fact; whatever the case, this ignorance or lack of awareness can lead to immoral actions. For these reasons, critical thinking can help persons avoid doing wrong to others, acting unjustly toward others, or engaging in actions that cause pain and suffering. If a person wants to do the right thing, this creates a strong incentive to be a critical thinker. Here’s a joke that illustrates the connection between irrational thinking and doing the wrong thing:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t appear to be breathing and his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other hunter whips out his cell phone and calls 911. He gasps to the operator. “My friend is dead! What can I do!?” In a calm soothing voice, the operator replies, “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure that he’s dead.” There is silence then a shot is heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says, “OK, now what?”

In this example, the hunter makes a terrible mistake because he makes an inappropriate inference from what the operator says: there’s the possibility that his friend is not dead and if that’s the case, the operator’s instructions will be different from the ones she will give if the friend is really dead. It’s true that her wording – “Let’s make sure that he’s dead” – is ambiguous. This does not, however, excuse the fact that he wasn’t thinking rationally. Some of us might want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he made this error in thinking because he had panicked. Even so, the joke illustrates that the failure to think rationally can result in immoral or unethical actions.

The Desire to Appear Intelligent to Others

Jokes illustrate another reason to be a critical thinker: Even as we generally do not want to act immorally or unethically, so we do not want to be shown to be misguided or wrong about whatever is being discussed. True, there are times when we enjoy looking stupid or being viewed by others as incredibly dumb; the enjoyment often comes from knowing that there are benefits from being viewed as dumb, such as the fact that we will not be expected to assume responsibility for solving the problem. So, being perceived as dumb can be the smart thing to do. But for the most part, we like others to think that we are smart and intelligent, and that our opinions have a lot to com mend themselves. Many jokes, like the one about the hunter, play on our desire to appear intelligent by placing someone in a situation that calls for rational thinking ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Series
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Why Thinking Critically Is Important
• 2 Fallacies of Relevance
• 3 Fallacies of Evidence
• 4 Fallacies of Assumption
• 5 Critical Thinking and Objective Truth
• References
• Index