Prolegomena to a New Theory of Humour

In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its resolution may provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for humour. If the revision worked, it would be a great result, for it would show that being humorous is an objective property, though a relational, actually mind-dependent, one; namely, a response-dependent property of perceived incongruity. More precisely, something (a story, typically a pun or a joke, or even a picture as well as the apprehension of an actual piece of behaviour) is humorous if and only if it makes one entertain, within a fictional representational model, a representation that is perceived, or better realized, as paradoxical or absurd with respect to another representation. This representation was previously entertained, possibly implicitly, within the same model. Putting together the first representation with the second one, since they are located in that model, allows for one’s disengagement. Primarily, this disengagement is moral: morally implausible representations can be entertained with other incongruous representations (at least, up to a certain extent), since they are located in a fictional, not a real, model.