Re: Aristotle's "lost" second book?

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Aug 31 2003 - 16:01:36 MDT

  • Next message: Barbara Lamar: "RE: Aristotle's "lost" second book?"

    The book also figures in (slight spoiler) Umberto Eco's _Name of the
    Rose_, where it is discussed. Most likely Eco knew about the medieval
    rumors and played with them for his story (very well worth reading).

    Given that Aristotle's text were little more than lecture notes compiled
    by others it is hard to tell what he might have said or not.

    On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 03:44:15AM +1000, Brett Paatsch wrote:
    >
    > For some reason that I don't get, the formal study of laughter has
    > never really intrigued, as much as it should. The last time I heard of
    > "a theory of emotion" Schacter was it's proponent. Curiously he argued
    > (if memory serves) that we sense "something" as a sort of arousal then
    > look around to the world for context on how to interpret or label that
    > feeling of arousal back to ourselves. This creates an opportunity for
    > quick suggestive types like comics and rhetoricians.

    I think the usual reason is that it was considered somewhat irrelevant;
    while we enjoy laughter, "real medicine" should deal with major
    illnesses and core issues of the mind. It is just recently the
    neuroscience of emotion has become popular, and the psychology of
    positive mental states is also just getting started.

    I know there are many other humor theories. Freud had some important
    early ones distinguishing between "innocent" and "tendentious" jokes,
    where the later have a sexual or aggressive content. Raskin had a theory
    that we laugh when we encounter something that is dompatible with two
    different semantic scripts which are opposite in one of a number of
    particular ways. Veatch suggests a theory where the semantics of the
    situation is normal but the affective context is absurd
    (http://www.tomveatch.com/else/humor/paper/humor.html)

    And Sasha had an IMHO nicely cognitive theory where we laugh due to the
    surprise when a cognitive set is transformed:
    http://www.ethologic.com/sasha/articles/humor.html
    (I remember him explaining it to me when we were driving through
    Boston)

    -- 
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    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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