Understanding Humour and Understanding Music
Kendall L. Walton · 1993
Abstract Anthony is an anthropologist doing field-work on Mars. He notices that Martians laugh on occasion. They emit from time to time, out of the opening in their bodies from which they speak, a kind of staccato melisma. (I shall not enquire into how Anthony identifies this behaviour as laughter.) Anthony does not understand why they laugh when they do; he does not see what is funny. So he sets about trying to find out. He takes careful notes on the circumstances in which they laugh and those in which they do not. When necessary, he arranges experiments, setting up various situations to see which ones elicit amusement from the natives. Eventually, Anthony is able to predict when Martians will laugh. He knows, for instance, that if Martha, or any other mature Martian from the upper socio-economic class, sees a yellow square shape moving horizontally from left to right across a movie screen, and if she has not seen such a phenomenon previously, she will break out in peals of hysterical laughter. For the sake of argument, let us make the enormously unrealistic assumption that Anthony’s predictions are perfect.