Inside Jokes
Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
Published on 4. March 2011
Book
Hardback
376 pages
978-0-262-01582-0 (ISBN)
Description
Some things are funny -- jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far
Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed -- but why? Why does humor exist in the
first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks,
watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel
Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose,
evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with
open-ended thinking. Mother Nature -- aka natural selection -- cannot just order the brain to find
and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure.
So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists
over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is
humor.
Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed -- but why? Why does humor exist in the
first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks,
watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel
Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose,
evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with
open-ended thinking. Mother Nature -- aka natural selection -- cannot just order the brain to find
and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure.
So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists
over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is
humor.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 0 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-01582-0 (9780262015820)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Matthew M. Hurley | Daniel C. Dennett | Reginald B. Adams Jr.
Inside Jokes
Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
Book
02/2013
MIT Press
€36.70
Article exhausted; check different version
Matthew M. Hurley | Daniel C. Dennett | Reginald B. Adams
Inside Jokes
Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
E-Book
03/2011
MIT Press
€38.99
Available for download
Persons
Matthew M. Hurley is researching emotions and creativity under Douglas R. Hofstadter at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University. Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is the author of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2005, 2006) and other books. Reginald B. Adams, Jr., is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Penn State University.
Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is the author of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2005, 2006) and other books.
Matthew M. Hurley is researching emotions and creativityunder Douglas R. Hofstadter at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognitionat Indiana University.
Reginald B. Adams, Jr., is AssistantProfessor of Psychology at Penn State University.
Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is the author of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2005, 2006) and other books.
Matthew M. Hurley is researching emotions and creativityunder Douglas R. Hofstadter at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognitionat Indiana University.
Reginald B. Adams, Jr., is AssistantProfessor of Psychology at Penn State University.