{"id":2379,"date":"2021-10-26T12:17:37","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T12:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/10\/26\/an-old-descartes-joke\/"},"modified":"2021-10-26T12:17:37","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T12:17:37","slug":"an-old-descartes-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/10\/26\/an-old-descartes-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"An Old Descartes Joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fall of 1989 a female student at Case Western Reserve University told me the following Descartes joke.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our man stops at a bar, the 'tender asks whether he wants a drink, Descartes says, "I think not, then disappears. I replied, pedantically, "I think therefore I am" is not logically equivalent to "I think not therefore I am not" any more than "I am walking therefore I am moving" is logically equivalent to "I am not walking therefore I am not moving." So the joke rests on a logical mistake. <\/span><\/p>\n

But this is true of many if not most jokes.  I have toyed with the notion that most humor stems from logico-conceptual incoherence of one sort or another, ambiguity, amphiboly, equivocation and various formal mistakes.   Another example is Yogi Berra's "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."  Or:  "Who was that lady I saw you with last night?  That was no lady, that was my wife!"  Or:  "I see you got a haircut.  No, I got 'em all<\/em> cut."<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the fall of 1989 a female student at Case Western Reserve University told me the following Descartes joke. Our man stops at a bar, the 'tender asks whether he wants a drink, Descartes says, "I think not, then disappears. I replied, pedantically, "I think therefore I am" is not logically equivalent to "I think … Continue reading “An Old Descartes Joke”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}