Humour

...

Great topic Satyr, but I dont know where to start.

Re: Humour
Satyr

There is also Bergson perspective.
He starts to say that we only find comic in human situations. We only find comic an animal when we see in it human characteristics.
Second, comic excludes compassion. We all laugh when a fat guy, well dressed, falls in the ground. But if it is a women, an old man, we don't laugh, because we feel compassion. Who laughs when a blind man falls? We laugh specially when someone is adjusted to a social image of power or dignity, and suddenly falls in the mud. It is as if he took the mask, and only remain a poor fellow, confused.
And there is the social censure. If a man walks imitating the poses of an woman, people laugh as a censure to that man that is different.
We laugh at the different, as a punishment.

See, as an example, the comic movies: what makes me laugh of Stan and Laurel is not their incapacity to deal with reality. It is the fact that they try to adjust to the image of normal citizens - the "dignity" of Stan!- but the results are catastrophical.

Humor as censure, and the fall of the masks. I believe this are the most common forms of our human comic.

My dog (part Border Collie) smiles when I pick
up her lead to take her for a walk. She also appears to experience great glee when she manages to steal a dog biscuit from my other dog. She then lies down and chews the biscuit happily with one eye on her misfortunate rival. Would you say this exchange is in anyway humourous to her?

Can dogs smile?

arf arf, of course!!!!

I believe they can - but then I wonder if we know that only because evolutionarily it has paid off for them to have the muscles to smile. I wonder if other animals can 'smile' and 'laugh' they just do not have the outer manifestation of it that we can recognize.

I think humans are the only ones who can laugh like humans. I think it is a matter of attempting to ascribe human attributes to animals. Sort of a negative anthropomorphism.

TF

just thinking
It's more complicated than possessing the mechanics to smile or laugh.

Laughter is a release of nervous tension; nervous tension that comes from becoming aware of a disjunction between perceived reality and abstracted memorized reality.

Through experience stored in memory, I come up with mental models of how things are or how they work. When an occurrence surprises us by contradicting this stored memory, that has created rules of logic and our sense of reality then we feel vulnerable or suddenly exposed to the unknown.

If this feeling is not immediately threatening or doesn't require an immediate reaction or when it exists in abstraction such as linguistic disjunction or ideological disjunction, then we feel it as a sudden explosion of hilarity.

I believe the key here is the awareness of the absurd.
The more awareness is possible, the more possibility for absurdity exists.
That is why humour is tied in with intelligence and only higher beings can be said to possess the sense of humour.

Satyr.....It is impossible to be fully aware
of how a dog, or even another person thinks.
How then, can we say with any degree of certitude,
that another species has no sense of humour?

Like anything else, absolute certainty is impossible.

We observe and create hypothesis and then models or strategies based on this hypothesis.

All opinions are generalizations and models based on limited information.

All abstraction is a simplification which enables memory and creates the possibility for experience.

I have noticed a single robin outside my house this week which has been throwing itself against the window glass repeatedly. Is it enarmoured of its own reflection? Is it looking for a friend? Is it aware of how absurd its behaviour is but continues nevertheless?

I dunno.

Hmmm .......... I wonder if he's related to the dove at the right here that keeps trying to fly outta' the box.

I have now cut out paper hawks and stuck them on
several windows. They haven't worked at all as a deterrent! The robin keeps throwing itself against the glass. Maybe it is trying to nest?

Could it be looking for the dove?!!

Think back shepaints..... perhaps you two have met before, and and the persistent robin is trying to renew an old friendship. ...think...think.

It is like living in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's
"The Bird"......

Ouch!...That was quite a budget cut.

Yes indeed Booman. Central casting couldn't afford a crowe, so they settled for a robin instead! Williams is his name, I think!

I think I understand what you are saying Satyr, and I think I mostly agree.

I've noticed that the more intelligent people are, the more they have the capacity to find "humor" in situations that lesser intellects find offensive.

This suggests a greater understanding of the intelligent persons own mind and of the "boundary bursting" being less traumatic for them as a result?