Wittgenstein once remarked that 'a serious and good philosophical work could be written that consisted entirely of jokes'. Inspired by this idea, John Allen Paulos shows how conceptual humour and analytic philosophy resonate at a very deep level. Both evince a keen concern for language and its (mis)interpretations; both require a free intelligence in a relatively open society, as well as a sceptical tendency towards debunking; and both are quintessentially human. "I Think, Therefore I Laugh" is packed with jokes, stories, parables, puzzles and anecdotes, all of which relate in one way or another to various philosophical problems, leading to some unexpected insights. CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION chapter o n e TWO UNLIKELY PAIRS OF MEN Introduction Wittgenstein and Carroll Groucho Meets Russell chapter t w o LOGIC Either-Or You Bet Your Life Sillygisms The Titl of This Section Contains Three Erors Russell’s Dr. Goldberg and Dr. Rubin Language and Metalanguage: Do You Get It? Meaning, Reference, and Dora Black’s First Husband Analytic vs. Synthetic, Boole vs. Boyle, and Mathematics vs. Cookery Miscellany chapter t h r e e SCIENCE Induction, Causality, and Hume’s Eggs The Tortoise Came First? Of Birds and Strange Colors Truths, Half-Truths, and Statistics Duhem, Poincaré, and the Poconos-Catskill Diet Reductionism, Fallibilism, and Opportunism Randomness and the Berry Task Determinism and Smart Computers Bell’s Inequality and Weirdness On Assumptions chapter f o u r PEOPLE Context, Complexity, and Artificial Intelligence Why Did He Just Now Touch His Head? Arrow, Prisoners, and Compromise AFTERWORD BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX |
"I Think, Therefore I Laugh. The Flip Side of Philosophy" by John Allen Paulos
