Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind - Softcover

Hurley, Matthew M.; Dennett, Daniel C.; Adams Jr., Reginald B.

  • 3.77 out of 5 stars
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9780262518697: Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0262518694 ISBN 13: 9780262518697
Publisher: MIT Press, 2013

Synopsis

This evolutionary and cognitive theory of humor seeks to reveal the complex science behind why we crack up.

“A sophisticated analysis  . . . written with clarity, good cheer, and, of course, wit.” ―Steven Pinker, author of How The Mind Works
 
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.

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About the Author

Matthew M. Hurley is currently researching teleology and agency at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University.

Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor Codirector of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness; Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (all published by the MIT Press), From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Mind, and other books.

Reginald B. Adams, Jr., is Associate Professor of Psychology researching emotion and social perception at Penn State University.

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Publisher
MIT Press
Publication date
2013
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0262518694
ISBN 13 
9780262518697
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
359
Rating
  • 3.77 out of 5 stars
    348 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780262015820: Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  026201582X ISBN 13:  9780262015820
Publisher: Mit Pr, 2011
Hardcover