The mental experience of laughter is the mind immediately perceiving the falsity or absurdity of information.
*immediate perception in philsophy and my use here is what is instantly knowable without any other means necesary. It's what takes place in the mind. *Note: that you can immediately perceive something is false through laughter, but you may be misperceiving the facts. You can laugh at things that are actually true, but it would be because you misperceived or misintpreted the information. Had you accurately perceived the information, you would for certain know that it's false should you have the experience of laughter.
*mind. e.g. Sensations, thoughts, feelings, imaginations. Note that laughter is a perception, which is very different from an interpretation, in that intpretation is how your mind understands information which is perceived.
You can reach this conclusion by realizing that
1.Genuine laughter cannot be forced
2.An individual can deeply examine their own experience of laughter and everytime will conclude that the fundamental cause is a sense of falsity or oddity in some way and on some level.
A genuine experience of laughter is caused by an internal mental event or external stimulus. You can sort of force yourself to experience the perception of laughter, a forced laugh, but this truly is just recalling a stored experience of laughter once more.
I received this insight into humor based off of my understanding of psychology through the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. It deals with the deeper level of the indicator, the functions theory. So first I'll need to give you a crash course.
You don't need to know the details of how the indicator works, but it'd certainly be helpful. I'll make my point and then give more details about the indicator with a wikipedia article link after it, so if you find your self confused or in need of a further explaination skip down to the bottom of the message. It is a useful tool for understanding people and characters.
What you need to know is that it give us four psychological catergories for the mind called "functions" Sensing, Intuition, Thinking, and Feeling. Each person is 1 of 16 types and each has four functions in a specific order. The functions occupy different parts of the brain, so everyone can use them just not equally.
The 4 Psychological Catergories of Humor
1. Sensing
2. Intuition
3. Thinking
4. Feeling
What is Sensing?
The sensing function is focused on what can immediately be perceived to be true. The most common and powerful tools for immediate perception are the senses though the sensing function is not limited to this. People who strongly use this function have a strong sense of physical, "real life" reality. Their perceived reality based on what they themselves have observed. There are two directions for each function, introversion or extroversion which determines where a person prefers introversion or extroversion when using a specific function. It's represented by an i or e next to the letter so Si means Introverted Sensing while Se represents. Intuition functions are represented by an N so it's not confusing with Introversion, which is represented by an I.
Sensing Humor- sensation is the foundation of knowledge, so false statements, lies, and abnormal behavior.
Examples,
All forms of lying, including exaggeration. " I was so hungry I ate 1000 eggs."
Funny faces, odd dancing, harmless slap-stick and socially abnormal behovior for light humor, and extreme violence and crudeness etc. for dark humor. Dark humor is basically taking delight in the harm of others or making light of it, it can be any form of harm, physical, mental, emotional etc.
What is Intuition?
Intuition is naming, catergorizing, organizing, and intpretating information. It's the part of the brain that stores information not acquired through the senses, hypothetical knowledge, such as language, imagination, or other abstract concepts. Side note: What I learned from my logic class is that no one can imagine what is logically impossible. No matter how hard I try, I can't imagine a square circle because the definition of a square and a circle contradict each other; So, under that premise, anything imaginable is logically possible. You can know something is true purely through hypothetical examples and logic, called dedecutive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is the basis of mathematics; it's the reason math can tell you information about the world without testing or evidence /end side note. Intuition is heavily meaning and understanding based. It's very semantical rather than syntactical. Sensual perception is what you see, and intuitive perception is the interpretation of what you see.
A second side note: When a person's learning style it's most likely based off of the sensations the person initially used to create their abstract concepts. For exampe, a person who has a verbal learning style must have learned language and abstract conceptions through sound predominantly.
Intuition Humor- , perceivabled false intpretations of information and interpretations that lie outside of what one perceives to be normal interpretation; unfitting, uncommon, or abnormal associations and connections
Examples
Mistranslations, improper word use,
What is Thinking?
The thinking functions lie in the part of the brain that enables the perception and use of logic. People acting out of their thinking function have a strong desire to be challenged and achieve.
Thinking a.k.a Logic Humor- perceiving or interpreting information as logically fallacious in some way.
What is Feeling?
Emotions, morals
Feeling humor-inappropriate abnormal emotions, intensly sobbing and wailing because someone offers you icecream, Shouting joy and victory dancing when you find a penny on a ground. Most swearing humor is emotional humor because it's swear words are expressions of extreme emotion, but extreme emotion rarely fits the situation. The same effect can be achieve by using other words that sybolise extreme emotion. " You ate the last cookie?!! I HATE YOU!!!
Karma jokes are emotional humor too, as it's moral based, and morals are more or less emotion based.
Shock value, laughing at the unexpected, that's what you mean by "Shock value" right? There are levels of deepness to emotion so not all emotional humor is weighted equally. Peceiving something will hurt you, but then it doesn't so you're brain laughs as a cool down from the stress. It tends to be the cause that nothing phases me, so it's rare for me to genuinely laugh from shock. I'm not very emotional, so this all makes sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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