Abstract

Humour is a funny thing. Everyone knows what humour is but no-one knows exactly how it works. This is the reason why I decided to write a PhD on the philosophy of humour. Some may see this as an odd mix – after all, philosophy is a weighty discipline and humour a light topic. But humour is a phenomenon that anthropologists have discovered in every known human culture and the average person laughs around 17 times a day. Moreover, although primatologists have observed laughter in apes (and rats), the mental sophistication required for full-blown humour seems to be exclusively human. Surely this makes it a legitimate topic to furrow a few philosophical brows. So humour is human – but plenty of us have not perfected the art quite yet. For those still struggling, here are four rules of thumb for being more humorous.