Objective Humor
Is humor objective or subjective? Some discussion from Knowledge, Reality, and Value book club.
In the books Ethical Intuitionism and Knowledge, Reality, and Value by Michael Huemer, he defends the idea of humor subjectivism, the idea is that there is no objective humor. This sort of discussion usually takes place when discussing moral objectivism. If “wrong” is objective, then why isn’t beauty, humor, cuteness or coolness?
It seems that humor is a property of things in an objective sense. I made the point that people could meaningfully express things like “That’s funny but not to me” and “People think that’s funny, but it’s not.” Also, Dave Chappelle would still be funny even if no one spoke English. These seem like reasonable things to say.
I commented on the Knowledge, Reality and Value Book Club post and Michael Huemer responded later to my quote:
Maybe it is plausible that there is an objective humor, but it is always directly sensed rather than a consequence of constructing a chain of arguments from intuitions.
My main problem is that I just have no idea what this objective humor is supposed to be. I have no idea what funniness is, if it doesn’t have something to do with amusement, and I have no idea what amusement is if it’s not a reaction in observers.
This seems reasonable to me. I feel a little bit mixed. Maybe this is merely an incoherent element of how people talk about humor. I don’t know what objective humor would be like unless it relies on amusement either!