Philosophy *cough* jokes
January 5th 2007 00:17
For Monty Python and philosophy, check out this post.
Two behaviorists have sex. One turns to the other and says, "That was good for you: how was it for me?"
Question: Why is the solipsist unhappy? --- Answer: Because no one will accept his arguments as valid.
Psychologists think they're experimental psychologists.
Experimental psychologists think they're biologists.
Biologists think they're biochemists.
Biochemists think they're chemists.
Chemists think they're physical chemists.
Physical chemists think they're physicists.
Physicists think they're theoretical physicists.
Theoretical physicists think they're mathematicians.
Mathematicians think they're metamathematicians.
Metamathematicians think they're philosophers.
Philosophers think they're gods.
Question: What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? --- Answer: Make me one with everything.
From John Lachs' entry on "Footnotes to Plato" in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
A.N. Whitehead once wrote that "the safest general characterization" of Western thought is that "it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". This testy assessment of an entire tradition is often recited by Platonists and has earned for Whitehead the accolades of the aphorism crowd.
The great thinkers of the past certainly did not think that they were adding footnotes to Plato's text. Had Kant thought he was adding one, he would surely have kept the Critique of Pure Reason under 500 pages. And should Wittgenstein have suspected that he was producing scholia, he would have spent at least a little time reading the text.
... Does Descartes, who subverted the starting-point of ancient philosophy, constitute no more than an afterthought to it? Should Hume, who rejected both its premisses and its conclusions in favour of his own original views, get no credit beyond having discovered a new wrinkle on wisdom's old face? Can we even think that in his stunning synthesis of everything ancient and modern, Hegel rehearsed only what Plato had always known?
...
Possibly, however, Whitehead's statement was made in the spirit of rampageous over-generalization one can expect from footnoters to Plato. If so, it must be taken with a grain of salt or greeted by rolling one's eyes. But even then, in one clear respect, the claim he makes is false. For the safest way to deal with the history of Western thought is not to characterize it in general terms at all.
A boy is about to go on his first date, but he has no idea what to talk about. He asks his father for advice, and the pearls of wisdom in reply are, "Son, there are three subjects that always work. These are food, family, and philosophy."
The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda fountain. Ice-cream sodas in front of them, they stare at each other for several uncomfortable minutes. The boy remembers his father's words. He asks the girl: "Do you like potato pancakes?".
"No," she says, and the silence returns.
After a few more nerve-wracking minutes, the boy thinks again of his father's suggestions, and turns to the second item on the list.
"Do you have a brother?"
"No," says the girl, and, again, the silence is deafening.
In desperation the boy plays his final card. He thinks of his father's advice, and asks: "If you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?"
Two rednecks, Bubba and Cooter, decide to go to college. Bubba goes first, and he is advised to take maths, history and logic.
-- "What's logic?" says Bubba.
-- "Well, let me give you an example," says the professor. "Do you own a tractor?"
-- "Sure do," says Bubba.
-- "Okay. Then I assume, using logic, that you have a yard."
-- "That's real good," says Bubba, in awe.
-- "Logic also tells me that since you have a yard, you also have a house. Is that right?"
-- "Gawly!” says Bubba.
-- "And since you own a house and a house is tough to take care of by yourself, the odds are that you have a wife. Right?"
-- "Betty Mae! This is incredible!"
-- "Finally, since you have a wife, logically I can assume you are heterosexual. Is that right?"
-- "You are absolutely right! Why that's the most fascinatin' thang I ever heerd of. I can't wait to take this here logic class!"
Bubba, proud of the new world opening up to him, goes back into the hallway where Cooter is waiting.
-- "So what classes are ya takin’?" says Cooter.
-- "Maths, history and logic," says Bubba.
-- "What in tarnation is logic?"
-- "Let me give you an example," says Bubba. "Do you own a tractor?"
-- "No."
-- "Then you’re gay."
Question: What do you get when you cross a postmodernist with a mafia boss? --- Answer: An offer you can't understand.
Question: How do you get a philosopher off your porch? --- Answer: Pay for the pizza.
Question: What's the difference between a philosopher and an engineer? --- Answer: About $80,000 per year.
John Heil on "Twin-Earth" in Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy:
Twin-Earth, a fictitious planet first visited by Hilary Putnam in a thought experiment designed to show, among other things, that "'meanings' just ain't in the head"... Although Twin-Earth has become a popular stopping-off place for philosophers en route to theories of meaning and mental content, others regard Twin-Earth as hopelessly remote, doubting that useful conclusions can be drawn about our Earthly circumstances from research conducted there.
A bunch of philosophy cartoons here (about Plato, Descartes, free will, Anselm, God, etc).
How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?
"Hmmm... well there's an interesting question isn't it?"
"Define 'light bulb'..."
"How can you be sure it needs changing?"
From a jokes page:
Q. How many deconstructionists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. On the contrary, the Nile is the longest river in Africa.
Q. How many modal logicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A. In which world?
From an e-mail forward:
From Russell's "On Denoting":
By the law of excluded middle, either "A is B" or "A is not B" must be true. Hence either "the present King of France is bald" or "the present King of France is not bald" must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig.
An engineer, an economist, a physicist, and a philosopher are hiking through the hills of Scotland. On the top of a hill they see a black sheep.
"What do you know," the engineer remarks. "The sheep in Scotland are black."
"No, no", protests the economist. "At least one of the sheep in Scotland is black."
The physicist considers this a moment. "That's not quite right. The truth is that there's at least one sheep which is black from one side."
"Well, that's not quite right either," interjects the philosopher. "There appears to be something describable as a 'sheep' that seems to be black from one side..."
From an article in the China Daily:
A job hunter, a philosophy major, went here, there and everywhere in his search for employment, but in vain. Having run out of options, he swallowed his pride and took up the offer of playing a bear in a costume at a zoo. He was locked up in a cage, where he was supposed to imitate various bear-like movements to entertain visitors.
To his horror, another bear appeared in the cage and started approaching him. He panicked and was on the brink of collapse when the bear said: "Don't be afraid. I'm also a philosophy major."
One day the great philosopher Socrates came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.
"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it."
"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain it's true?"
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued."You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter -- the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really..."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"
The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.
It also explains why he never found out that Plato was shagging his wife.
This University of Otago lexicon includes such gems as:
Mackie the Knife. Fictional gangster with no respect for moral values.
"On the sidewalk, Sunday morning
Lies a moral realist oozing life
Someone's sneaking round the corner
Is the someone Mackie the knife?"
Richard at Philosophy, et cetera mentions the following:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Epicurus: For fun.
Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
Zeno: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Cause of death for philosophers:
Bentham: Fell off his stilts
Freud: Slipped
Goodman: Gruesome bleen inflection
Hare: Wrong prescription
Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice
Jackson: Saw red
Kripke: Went rigid
Marx: Capital punishment
Peirce: Abducted
Plato: Caved in
Wittgenstein: Became the late Wittgenstein
No comment about Occam? -- I'm sure the list could be expanded indefinitely at any rate...
Jonathan Ree, for New Humanist ("Liberty, the Left and Lolita", volume 124, issue 4, July/August 2009) writes of Isaiah Berlin:
"What the world needed was better jokes, not better theories. He quite liked the one about Marxism as 'the opium of the Marxists'... But his best joke, to my mind, is a borrowed one about Richard Wagner as 'the Puccini of music' - an ingenious, serious, slow-acting piece of witticism that manages to poke fun both at the most serious operatic composer of the 19th century and at the most popular one of the 20th."
If you haven't split your sides, pick yourself off the floor for some further reading:
-- Funnier than my Nietzsche paper.
-- David Chalmers seems to be a droll fellow; links to lots of joke sites, philosophers' break-up lines, etc.
-- Causes of death of philosophers.
-- More jokes.
-- Some more jokes.
-- Yet more jokes.
-- If you're desperate for a laugh...
***
Two behaviorists have sex. One turns to the other and says, "That was good for you: how was it for me?"
***
Question: Why is the solipsist unhappy? --- Answer: Because no one will accept his arguments as valid.
***
Psychologists think they're experimental psychologists.
Experimental psychologists think they're biologists.
Biologists think they're biochemists.
Biochemists think they're chemists.
Chemists think they're physical chemists.
Physical chemists think they're physicists.
Physicists think they're theoretical physicists.
Theoretical physicists think they're mathematicians.
Mathematicians think they're metamathematicians.
Metamathematicians think they're philosophers.
Philosophers think they're gods.
***
Question: What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? --- Answer: Make me one with everything.
***
***
From John Lachs' entry on "Footnotes to Plato" in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
A.N. Whitehead once wrote that "the safest general characterization" of Western thought is that "it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". This testy assessment of an entire tradition is often recited by Platonists and has earned for Whitehead the accolades of the aphorism crowd.
The great thinkers of the past certainly did not think that they were adding footnotes to Plato's text. Had Kant thought he was adding one, he would surely have kept the Critique of Pure Reason under 500 pages. And should Wittgenstein have suspected that he was producing scholia, he would have spent at least a little time reading the text.
... Does Descartes, who subverted the starting-point of ancient philosophy, constitute no more than an afterthought to it? Should Hume, who rejected both its premisses and its conclusions in favour of his own original views, get no credit beyond having discovered a new wrinkle on wisdom's old face? Can we even think that in his stunning synthesis of everything ancient and modern, Hegel rehearsed only what Plato had always known?
...
Possibly, however, Whitehead's statement was made in the spirit of rampageous over-generalization one can expect from footnoters to Plato. If so, it must be taken with a grain of salt or greeted by rolling one's eyes. But even then, in one clear respect, the claim he makes is false. For the safest way to deal with the history of Western thought is not to characterize it in general terms at all.
***
A boy is about to go on his first date, but he has no idea what to talk about. He asks his father for advice, and the pearls of wisdom in reply are, "Son, there are three subjects that always work. These are food, family, and philosophy."
The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda fountain. Ice-cream sodas in front of them, they stare at each other for several uncomfortable minutes. The boy remembers his father's words. He asks the girl: "Do you like potato pancakes?".
"No," she says, and the silence returns.
After a few more nerve-wracking minutes, the boy thinks again of his father's suggestions, and turns to the second item on the list.
"Do you have a brother?"
"No," says the girl, and, again, the silence is deafening.
In desperation the boy plays his final card. He thinks of his father's advice, and asks: "If you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?"
***
Two rednecks, Bubba and Cooter, decide to go to college. Bubba goes first, and he is advised to take maths, history and logic.
-- "What's logic?" says Bubba.
-- "Well, let me give you an example," says the professor. "Do you own a tractor?"
-- "Sure do," says Bubba.
-- "Okay. Then I assume, using logic, that you have a yard."
-- "That's real good," says Bubba, in awe.
-- "Logic also tells me that since you have a yard, you also have a house. Is that right?"
-- "Gawly!” says Bubba.
-- "And since you own a house and a house is tough to take care of by yourself, the odds are that you have a wife. Right?"
-- "Betty Mae! This is incredible!"
-- "Finally, since you have a wife, logically I can assume you are heterosexual. Is that right?"
-- "You are absolutely right! Why that's the most fascinatin' thang I ever heerd of. I can't wait to take this here logic class!"
Bubba, proud of the new world opening up to him, goes back into the hallway where Cooter is waiting.
-- "So what classes are ya takin’?" says Cooter.
-- "Maths, history and logic," says Bubba.
-- "What in tarnation is logic?"
-- "Let me give you an example," says Bubba. "Do you own a tractor?"
-- "No."
-- "Then you’re gay."
***
Question: What do you get when you cross a postmodernist with a mafia boss? --- Answer: An offer you can't understand.
***
Question: How do you get a philosopher off your porch? --- Answer: Pay for the pizza.
Question: What's the difference between a philosopher and an engineer? --- Answer: About $80,000 per year.
***
John Heil on "Twin-Earth" in Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy:
Twin-Earth, a fictitious planet first visited by Hilary Putnam in a thought experiment designed to show, among other things, that "'meanings' just ain't in the head"... Although Twin-Earth has become a popular stopping-off place for philosophers en route to theories of meaning and mental content, others regard Twin-Earth as hopelessly remote, doubting that useful conclusions can be drawn about our Earthly circumstances from research conducted there.
***
A bunch of philosophy cartoons here (about Plato, Descartes, free will, Anselm, God, etc).
***
How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?
"Hmmm... well there's an interesting question isn't it?"
"Define 'light bulb'..."
"How can you be sure it needs changing?"
***
From a jokes page:
Q. How many deconstructionists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. On the contrary, the Nile is the longest river in Africa.
Q. How many modal logicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A. In which world?
***
From an e-mail forward:
***
***
From Russell's "On Denoting":
By the law of excluded middle, either "A is B" or "A is not B" must be true. Hence either "the present King of France is bald" or "the present King of France is not bald" must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig.
***
An engineer, an economist, a physicist, and a philosopher are hiking through the hills of Scotland. On the top of a hill they see a black sheep.
"What do you know," the engineer remarks. "The sheep in Scotland are black."
"No, no", protests the economist. "At least one of the sheep in Scotland is black."
The physicist considers this a moment. "That's not quite right. The truth is that there's at least one sheep which is black from one side."
"Well, that's not quite right either," interjects the philosopher. "There appears to be something describable as a 'sheep' that seems to be black from one side..."
***
From an article in the China Daily:
A job hunter, a philosophy major, went here, there and everywhere in his search for employment, but in vain. Having run out of options, he swallowed his pride and took up the offer of playing a bear in a costume at a zoo. He was locked up in a cage, where he was supposed to imitate various bear-like movements to entertain visitors.
To his horror, another bear appeared in the cage and started approaching him. He panicked and was on the brink of collapse when the bear said: "Don't be afraid. I'm also a philosophy major."
***
One day the great philosopher Socrates came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.
"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it."
"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain it's true?"
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued."You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter -- the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really..."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"
The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.
It also explains why he never found out that Plato was shagging his wife.
***
This University of Otago lexicon includes such gems as:
Mackie the Knife. Fictional gangster with no respect for moral values.
"On the sidewalk, Sunday morning
Lies a moral realist oozing life
Someone's sneaking round the corner
Is the someone Mackie the knife?"
***
Richard at Philosophy, et cetera mentions the following:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Epicurus: For fun.
Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
Zeno: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Cause of death for philosophers:
Bentham: Fell off his stilts
Freud: Slipped
Goodman: Gruesome bleen inflection
Hare: Wrong prescription
Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice
Jackson: Saw red
Kripke: Went rigid
Marx: Capital punishment
Peirce: Abducted
Plato: Caved in
Wittgenstein: Became the late Wittgenstein
No comment about Occam? -- I'm sure the list could be expanded indefinitely at any rate...
***
Jonathan Ree, for New Humanist ("Liberty, the Left and Lolita", volume 124, issue 4, July/August 2009) writes of Isaiah Berlin:
"What the world needed was better jokes, not better theories. He quite liked the one about Marxism as 'the opium of the Marxists'... But his best joke, to my mind, is a borrowed one about Richard Wagner as 'the Puccini of music' - an ingenious, serious, slow-acting piece of witticism that manages to poke fun both at the most serious operatic composer of the 19th century and at the most popular one of the 20th."
***
If you haven't split your sides, pick yourself off the floor for some further reading:
-- Funnier than my Nietzsche paper.
-- David Chalmers seems to be a droll fellow; links to lots of joke sites, philosophers' break-up lines, etc.
-- Causes of death of philosophers.
-- More jokes.
-- Some more jokes.
-- Yet more jokes.
-- If you're desperate for a laugh...
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Comment by Damo
Have you haerd about the philosophers picnic?
The started to dscuss the meal and starved to death.
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
I love those! Very funny. I especially like Bubba and the lessons of logic.
KylieW
Comment by Ash
Flashes of memories
Ash
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
.. you had me roaring with the first one and it got better from there ... thanks so much Adrian for the links ... will use them like prescription medicine ...
Lilla
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Q: How many deconstructionists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Even the framing of this question makes a grid of patriarchal assumptions that reveals a slavish devotion to phallocentric ideas - such as, technical accomplishment has inherent value, knowledge can be attained and quantities of labor can be determined empirically, all of which makes a discourse which further marginalizes the already disenfranchised.
Comment by WeR1Family
Stories of Wisdom
Lone - My Life and Thoughts
Thank you very much for always commenting my posts ^_^
I love this funny philosophy post, especially the bear philosopher at the zoo! I really did LOL on it! Haha, what an unimaginable hillarious situation!
HAHAHA, Make me one with everything!
Comment by JoshZ
"I think not."
Descartes then disappears in a puff of logic.
JZ
Comment by S.L. Bradish
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Comment by MelissaA
Fun Facts
I couldn't possibly pick a favourite from all of those, there are way too many! ; )