Dissecting the Frog

The Philosophy of Humour: A Debate

Despite the fact that I’m interested enough in humour to write the occasional blog post about it, and that my day job is teaching/doing philosophy, I’ve always been rather suspicious of the philosophical study of humour. Philosophers can and do discuss humour, but I suspect it’s always going to be of rather limited interest as a philosophical topic.

Teaching at Leeds alongside Dr. Nick Jones, whose staff profile lists among his research interests The Philosophy of Humour, provided the opportunity to explore these issues in the context of a relaxed debate for the Leeds University Philosophical Society. The contributions from both Nick and myself can be found here, in separate files.[i]

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[i] Nick’s talk contains numerous references to Great Dead Philosophers and their weird and occasionally wonderful thoughts on humour and laughter. Readers interested in chasing some of these references up could do worse than have a look through this.