Dissertation Project:
The Ethics of Humor
My dissertation concerns the kinds of moral criticisms that are, and are not, appropriate to issue to humor-sharers. How can we tell whether a joke is cruel, or racist, or misanthropic, as opposed to being just good fun? I argue that existing writing on humor ethics is largely unhelpful when it comes to answering questions like this, because it features arguments about humor that apply equally well to non-humorous speech. This is a problem: humor is clearly subject to a different set of moral rules than other forms of speech – think, for example, of the ways you can insult your friends jokingly, where saying the same things seriously would be awful – and the job of humor ethicists is to determine exactly what these idiosyncratic rules are. Mapping the points at which the moral rules that apply to jokes diverge from those regarding non-jokes is the guiding aim of my dissertation.
Criticizing jokes is complicated by the fact that humor is not literal: so, if I tell a joke that plays upon the idea that Scots are cheap, it would not be fair to report that I claimed that Scots are cheap. Likewise, jokes can be enjoyed from multiple epistemic ‘angles’ – so you also cannot claim that a person would need to believe that Scots are cheap to find my joke funny. However, I make the case that humor relies on an interplay between something an audience considers unremarkable, and something it considers outrageous or unexpected – and this link between the success of a joke and its audience’s epistemic set is the key to establishing the kinds of moral criticisms of humor we can be justified in making. A joke can be based on premises that are especially accessible to bigots – and it is in virtue of this fact that we can justifiably consider a joke bigoted. A joke that is sufficiently proportionally likely to be enjoyed by bigots is a bigoted joke; one that is sufficiently likely to be enjoyed by right-thinking audiences is a non-bigoted joke.
Proceedings from my dissertation project are forthcoming in The Journal of Value Inquiry and Hypatia, as well as The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Aesthetics. I anticipate two further journal-quality publications emerging from my current humor ethics research.
Upcoming Research Projects:
“‘Suspending One's Disbelief, and Not Suspending One's Disbelief.”
Philosophical theory and non-academic criticism alike tend to treat suspension of disbelief as a primary goal of fictional entertainment. What the prevailing literature ignores is that audiences of fictions often do not suspend their disbelief, or engage with narrative developments as if they were real, at all. Fictions that are (intentionally) camp, kitschy, or meta typically invite their audiences to enjoy them on grounds that do not involve suspended disbelief; so too for ballet and pro wrestling, where audiences usually engage with the talent of the performers more than the events of the narrative. I use this observation to explain why audiences will often be willing to sympathize with protagonists they find morally objectionable, or to value outcomes they would not endorse in real life.
“To VAR or Not To VAR? Some Common Mistakes in The Popular Discussion of Sport.”
The value of soccer derives from its capacity for entertainment. As such, the rules of the sport are of instrumental, aesthetic value: the existence of a set of rules allows for the establishment of a game that non-participants can understand and enjoy. In everyday conversations surrounding the sport, however, they are almost universally misunderstood as having intrinsic, moral value, such that their more rigorous enforcement must be an automatic good. I debunk this commonplace, and note its relevance to discussions surrounding the adoption of Video Assistant Refereeing technology. Because these debates assume that fairer decisions are always desirable, their prevailing direction is towards ever more sophisticated technology to help prevent refereeing oversights. If we begin with the view that changes to sports’ rules should ultimately make them more entertaining, however, this presumption towards technological advancement disappears.
“Regarding the Ethical Permission to Use Self-Directed Slurs.”
One of the puzzles tackled by philosophers of slurs is the question of how a derogatory word can be reclaimed or reappropriated by members of the group to whom it refers. Answers to this question have typically involved the idea that group members do not have, and are not transmitting, pejorative views of their own group when they use slurs. But these answers cannot account for the fact that members of targeted groups have an uncommonly robust right to the use of slurs, even when they do intend to communicate such views. In this article I set out the desideratum for an account of slurs to acknowledge this fact, and propose a theory of slur-appropriation that has to do with the ethical relevance of a person’s lived experiences.
“Individual States, Non-Ideal Conditions, and the Duty to Open Borders.”
Many political philosophers argue that globally wealthy states have a collective moral duty to improve the lives of the global poor, which ought to be satisfied by enacting permissive migration laws. These arguments are made, however, at a level of abstraction from real policy-making, insofar as they are aimed at the wealthiest half of the world’s governments as a collective class. Real-world immigration policy is decided primarily at the level of individual states, and so I am interested in interpreting these proposed obligations at individual state level: assuming that all other wealthy states do not fulfil the obligations laid out in these articles (as is the case for any high-income country in the actual world today), what are the ethical duties regarding immigration of one single wealthy state?
“Resentment, Forgiveness, and the Limits of Apology.”
Amongst scholars interested in the concept of forgiveness, one challenge has been to explain how a person can genuinely believe that she has been wronged, and nevertheless give up resentment. One strategy has been to hold that an act of wrongdoing against one’s person, without a subsequent apology, sends a demeaning message about one’s value, and that resentment is a protest against that message. I am troubled by the conclusion, implied by such a view, that failing to forgive a repentant wrongdoer is always irrational. I propose an alternate account, in which forgiveness is a response to a belief about whether the wrongdoing in question is likely to be repeated in one's ongoing interactions.
The Ethics of Humor
My dissertation concerns the kinds of moral criticisms that are, and are not, appropriate to issue to humor-sharers. How can we tell whether a joke is cruel, or racist, or misanthropic, as opposed to being just good fun? I argue that existing writing on humor ethics is largely unhelpful when it comes to answering questions like this, because it features arguments about humor that apply equally well to non-humorous speech. This is a problem: humor is clearly subject to a different set of moral rules than other forms of speech – think, for example, of the ways you can insult your friends jokingly, where saying the same things seriously would be awful – and the job of humor ethicists is to determine exactly what these idiosyncratic rules are. Mapping the points at which the moral rules that apply to jokes diverge from those regarding non-jokes is the guiding aim of my dissertation.
Criticizing jokes is complicated by the fact that humor is not literal: so, if I tell a joke that plays upon the idea that Scots are cheap, it would not be fair to report that I claimed that Scots are cheap. Likewise, jokes can be enjoyed from multiple epistemic ‘angles’ – so you also cannot claim that a person would need to believe that Scots are cheap to find my joke funny. However, I make the case that humor relies on an interplay between something an audience considers unremarkable, and something it considers outrageous or unexpected – and this link between the success of a joke and its audience’s epistemic set is the key to establishing the kinds of moral criticisms of humor we can be justified in making. A joke can be based on premises that are especially accessible to bigots – and it is in virtue of this fact that we can justifiably consider a joke bigoted. A joke that is sufficiently proportionally likely to be enjoyed by bigots is a bigoted joke; one that is sufficiently likely to be enjoyed by right-thinking audiences is a non-bigoted joke.
Proceedings from my dissertation project are forthcoming in The Journal of Value Inquiry and Hypatia, as well as The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Aesthetics. I anticipate two further journal-quality publications emerging from my current humor ethics research.
Upcoming Research Projects:
“‘Suspending One's Disbelief, and Not Suspending One's Disbelief.”
Philosophical theory and non-academic criticism alike tend to treat suspension of disbelief as a primary goal of fictional entertainment. What the prevailing literature ignores is that audiences of fictions often do not suspend their disbelief, or engage with narrative developments as if they were real, at all. Fictions that are (intentionally) camp, kitschy, or meta typically invite their audiences to enjoy them on grounds that do not involve suspended disbelief; so too for ballet and pro wrestling, where audiences usually engage with the talent of the performers more than the events of the narrative. I use this observation to explain why audiences will often be willing to sympathize with protagonists they find morally objectionable, or to value outcomes they would not endorse in real life.
“To VAR or Not To VAR? Some Common Mistakes in The Popular Discussion of Sport.”
The value of soccer derives from its capacity for entertainment. As such, the rules of the sport are of instrumental, aesthetic value: the existence of a set of rules allows for the establishment of a game that non-participants can understand and enjoy. In everyday conversations surrounding the sport, however, they are almost universally misunderstood as having intrinsic, moral value, such that their more rigorous enforcement must be an automatic good. I debunk this commonplace, and note its relevance to discussions surrounding the adoption of Video Assistant Refereeing technology. Because these debates assume that fairer decisions are always desirable, their prevailing direction is towards ever more sophisticated technology to help prevent refereeing oversights. If we begin with the view that changes to sports’ rules should ultimately make them more entertaining, however, this presumption towards technological advancement disappears.
“Regarding the Ethical Permission to Use Self-Directed Slurs.”
One of the puzzles tackled by philosophers of slurs is the question of how a derogatory word can be reclaimed or reappropriated by members of the group to whom it refers. Answers to this question have typically involved the idea that group members do not have, and are not transmitting, pejorative views of their own group when they use slurs. But these answers cannot account for the fact that members of targeted groups have an uncommonly robust right to the use of slurs, even when they do intend to communicate such views. In this article I set out the desideratum for an account of slurs to acknowledge this fact, and propose a theory of slur-appropriation that has to do with the ethical relevance of a person’s lived experiences.
“Individual States, Non-Ideal Conditions, and the Duty to Open Borders.”
Many political philosophers argue that globally wealthy states have a collective moral duty to improve the lives of the global poor, which ought to be satisfied by enacting permissive migration laws. These arguments are made, however, at a level of abstraction from real policy-making, insofar as they are aimed at the wealthiest half of the world’s governments as a collective class. Real-world immigration policy is decided primarily at the level of individual states, and so I am interested in interpreting these proposed obligations at individual state level: assuming that all other wealthy states do not fulfil the obligations laid out in these articles (as is the case for any high-income country in the actual world today), what are the ethical duties regarding immigration of one single wealthy state?
“Resentment, Forgiveness, and the Limits of Apology.”
Amongst scholars interested in the concept of forgiveness, one challenge has been to explain how a person can genuinely believe that she has been wronged, and nevertheless give up resentment. One strategy has been to hold that an act of wrongdoing against one’s person, without a subsequent apology, sends a demeaning message about one’s value, and that resentment is a protest against that message. I am troubled by the conclusion, implied by such a view, that failing to forgive a repentant wrongdoer is always irrational. I propose an alternate account, in which forgiveness is a response to a belief about whether the wrongdoing in question is likely to be repeated in one's ongoing interactions.