Philosopher Jokes
Philosopher Jokes
Jokes Ripped Off from Pasi Kueppameki at
http://www.etla.fi:80/
km/joke.html
And Then Altered
The First Law of Philosophy
For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite
philosopher.
The Second Law of Philosophy
They're both wrong.
* * * * * * *
Question: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with a
philosopher?
Answer: An offer you can't understand.
* * * * * * *
Question: What is a recent philosophy Ph.D.'s usual question in
his or her first job?
Answer: "Would you like french fries with that, sir?"
* * * * * * *
If you put two philosophers in a room, you get two opinions,
unless one of them is Eddy Zemach, in which case you get
seven
opinions. (Apologies to Winston Churchill)
* * * * * * *
These jokes posted with the permission of Pasi
Kueppameki.
Descartes is sitting in a bar, having a drink. The bartender
asks him if he would like another. "I think not," he says and
vanishes in a puff of logic.
* * * * * * *
Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft
of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd
like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress
replies, "I'm sorry, monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about
with no milk?"
* * * * * * *
A boy is about to go on his first date, and is nervous about what
to talk about. He asks his father for advice. The father
replies: "My 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 a long
time, as the boy's nervousness builds. He remembers his father's
advice, and chooses the first topic. He asks the girl: "Do you
like potato pancakes?" She says "No," and the silence
returns.
After a few more uncomfortable minutes, the boy thinks of his
father's suggestion and turns to the second item on the list. He
asks, "Do you have a brother?" Again, the girl says "No" and
there is silence once again.
The boy then plays his last card. He thinks of his father's
advice and asks the girl the following question: "If you had a
brother, would he like potato pancakes?"
The three above jokes were contributed by Owen
Herring.
He attributes the third to Elliot
Sober.
* * * * * * *
Question: What do you get when you cross an aesthete with a
phenomenologist?
Answer: An interior daseiner.
Jeffrey Glick
* * * * * * *
Question: How do you get a philosopher off your porch?
Answer: Pay for the pizza.
Elizabeth Hoppe
* * * * * * *
An engineer, an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist, and a
philosopher were hiking through the hills of Scotland. Cresting the top of
one hill, they see, on top of the next, a black sheep. The engineer says:
"What do you know, the sheep in Scotland are black." "Well, *some* of the
sheep in Scotland are black," replies the experimental physicist. The
theoretical physicist considers this for a moment and says "Well, at least
one of the sheep in Scotland is black." "Well," the philosopher responds,
"on one side, anyway."
William Knorpp
* * * * * * *
A man does a good deed and as a reward his guardian angel appears
and offers him the answer to any question he wishes to ask. But
she says to take his time and she will return in two days. Well
the man immediately realized he could become very rich: Which
stock will go up the most over the next five years? Which horse
will win the Kentucky Derby? Who will win the next Superbowl?
etc. But then he thought, why waste this chance of a lifetime on
money? After all, money is only a means to happiness. With the
right question he can determine the secret of happiness itself!
But the more he
thought about it, the more he worried about tricks the angel might
play: for example, suppose he asked, "What will make me the
happiest man in the universe?" And she answered, "Go live on
planet Rigel III" - perhaps true, but perfectly useless.
So our careful questioner decided to take this problem to the
nearest philosophy department for assistance. He put the problem
to the chair. The chair loved the challenge and as it happens,
they were having a departmental meeting that evening anyway, so he
told the man to return the next day. When the man returned, the
chair beamed and informed him that the department put its best
minds together and came up with the best possible question to ask
the angel - and naturally he told the man the question to ask.
The next day the angel appeared and asked, "Well, do you have a
question for me?" "Yes," the man replied with a great deal of
confidence in his voice. "What are the members of the following
ordered pair: the first member of the pair is the best possible
question I could ask you, and the second member of the pair is the
answer to that question?" The angel smiled and said, "You know,
you couldn't have asked me a better question. In fact the first
member of the pair IS the question you just asked. But that means
the second member is the answer I'm giving you now."
* * * * * * *
A philosopher falls asleep and dreams. In his dream, one by one,
the greatest philosophers of all time stand before him and
systematically state their views and arguments: Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Descartes, etc. But in each case the
philosopher, dramatically pointing his finger at the presenter,
was able to come up with a devastating objection that left the
presenting philosopher speechless and unable to effectively
reply. In fact, the philosopher realized it was the same
objection in every case - he had found the perfect philosophical
move to make in conferences and colloquia. He forced himself to
wake up and write the objection down on a convenient slip of
paper, then, he drifted dreamily back to sleep with a smile on his
face. When he awoke the next morning he read the words, ....
"THAT¹S WHAT YOU SAY!"
These two jokes were contributed by Reed Richter.
PROOFS THAT P
Davidson's proof that p:
Let us make the following bold conjecture:
p.
Wallace's proof that p:
Davidson has made the following bold
conjecture: p.
Grunbaum:
As I have asserted again and again in previous
publications, p.
Putnam:
Some philosophers have argued that not-p, on the
grounds that q. It would be an interesting exercise to
count all the fallacies in this "argument." (It's really
awful, isn't it?) Therefore p.
Rawls:
It would be nice to have a deductive argument
that p from self-evident premises. Unfortunately I am
unable to provide one. So I will have to rest content with
the following intuitive considerations in its support:
p.
Unger:
Suppose it were the case that not-p. It would
follow from this that someone knows that q. But on my view,
no one knows anything whatsoever. Therefore p. (Unger
believes that the louder you say this argument, the more
persuasive it becomes.)
Katz:
I have seventeen arguments for the claim that p,
and I know of only four for the claim that not-p. Therefore
p.
Lewis:
Most people find the claim that not-p completely
obvious and when I assert p they give me an incredulous
stare. But the fact that they find not-p obvious is no
argument that it is true; and I do not know how to refute an
incredulous stare. Therefore, p.
Fodor:
My argument for p is based on three premises:
(1) q
(2) r, and
(3) p
From these, the claim that p deductively follows.
Some people may find the third premise controversial, but it
is clear that if we replaced that premise by any other
reasonable premise, the argument would go through just as
well.
Sellars:
Unfortunately limitations of space prevent it
from being included here, but important parts of the proof
can be found in each of the articles in the attached
bibliography.
Earman:
There are solutions to the field equations of
general relativity in which space-time has the structure of
a four-dimensional Klein bottle and in which there is no
matter. In each such space-time, the claim that not-p is
false. Therefore p.
Goodman:
Zabludowski has insinuated that my thesis
that p
is false, on the basis of alleged counterexamples. But
these so-called "counterexamples" depend on construing my
thesis that p in a way that it was obviously not intended--
for I intended my thesis to have no counterexamples.
Therefore p.
Kripke:
Outline of a Proof That P(1)
Some philosophers have argued that not-p. But
none of them seems to me to have made a convincing argument
against the intuitive view that this is not the case.
Therefore, p.
_______________________________________________________________
1. This outline was prepared hastily--at the editor's
insistence--from a taped manuscript of a lecture. Since I
was not even given the opportunity to revise the first draft
before publication, I cannot be held responsible for any
lacunae in the (published version of the) argument, or for
any fallacious or garbled inferences resulting from faulty
preparation of the typescript. Also, the argument now seems
to me to have problems which I did not know when I wrote it,
but which I can't discuss here, and which are completely
unrelated to any criticisms that have appeared in the
literature (or that I have seen in manuscript); all such
criticisms misconstrue my argument. It will be noted that
the present version of the argument seems to presuppose the
(intuitionistically unacceptable) law of double negation.
But the argument can easily be reformulated in a way that
avoids employing such an inference rule. I hope to expand
on these matters further in a separate
monograph.
Routley and Meyer:
If (q & not-q) is true, then there is a model
for p. Therefore p.
Plantinga:
It is a model theorem that p p. Surely it's
possible that p must be true. Thus p. But it is a model
theorem that p p. Therefore p.
Chisholm:
P-ness is self-presenting. Therefore,
p.
Morganbesser:
If not p, what? Q maybe?
Haack:
Unfortunately, by the very nature of logical
codationalism I cannot offer a proof that P along the elegant
lines of BonJour's coherentist proof. Indeed, I cannot offer a
PROOF that P at all, and for two reasons; first, because PROOF
(as opposed to proof) embodies a linear foundationalist
conception of justification that cannot survive the "up, up and
away" argument, and second because BonJour's own account of
justification falls prey to the "drunken students" argument. Nor
can I offer a proof that P, as I seem (like Fodor) to have
mislaid my theory of the a priori.
Yet a case can be made --
in modest, fallibly naturalistic terms -- for P. And if the
criteria embodied in codationalism are in fact truth-conducive
(and if they are not, then every other theory of justification is
likewise a failure since codational criteria are used by
coherentists and foundationalists without proper appreciation of
their interconnections), then this will amount not to a PROOF nor
yet a proof that P, but simply a proof that P, based on
the
explanatory integration of P with the rest of my beliefs that are
explanatorily integrated with each other.
The explanatory
integration at work in this proof is rather like that found in a
crossword puzzle. . . . [Remainder of the proof is left as an
exercise for the reader. For the solution, consult next Sunday's
London Times.]
Margolis's disproof that p:
The assumption that P -- indeed, the belief that
P is so
natural and obvious as to be beyond dispute -- is so deeply woven
into Western thought that any attempt to question it, much less
to overthrow it, is likely to be met with disbelief, scorn, and
ridicule. The denial of P is a deep thesis, a theme of courage,
a profound insight into the fundamental nature of things. (Or at
any rate it would be if there were a fundamental nature of
things, which there isn't.) Anyone unfamiliar with the hidden
brutalities of professional philosophy cannot imagine all the
nasty things that will be said about someone who dares to mount
an assault on P. (Just look at how neglected Protagoras is now
-- they even cut his writings up into tiny little bits!)
It has repeatedly been alleged that the denial of P is
self-refuting. Extraordinary! As if one bold enough to deny P
would feel bound by the conventions of dialethism on which alone
any charge of self-refutation rests! Once we have seen through
this delusion, we are free to dismiss as nonsense our current
vision not only of philosophy and science but also that quaint
notion of `the good life.' We are also free to discard
antiquated Hellenic prejudices as to what counts as proof and
disproof, whilst retaining (of course) a proper sense of logical
rigor. Hence, the foregoing constitutes a disproof of
P.
Causes of Death for Some of the Great
Philosophers
By Stiv Fleishman
Thales: Drowning
Parmenides: It wasn't anything at all
Ockham: Cut while shaving
Russell: Cut while being shaved by one who did not
shave himself
Descartes: Stopped thinking
Spinoza: Substance abuse
Leibniz: Monadnucleosis
Darwin: Natural causes
Hume: Unnatural causes
Kant: Transcendental causes (although it was his own
idea)
Paley: By design
Heidegger: By Dasein
Meinong: Climbing accident
Neurath: Boating accident
G.E. Moore: By his own hand, obviously
Sheffer: Stroke
Sartre: Nausea
Pascal: Became despondent after losing a wager
Wittgenstein: Tried to see if death was an experience
one lived through. (Alternate: fell off a ladder)
Hegel: Collision with owl at dusk
"From the Editor," Ethics, Volume 104, Number 2
(January 1994), page 225.
Posted with permission.
Top Ten List of Things Not to Say at an APA
Interview
By Torin Alter
10. That's Mr. (Ms.) NN to you.
9. Oh, that's just something I put in my CV for padding.
8. Does everyone at your school dress like that?
7. Would I be able to avoid administrative duties, if I plan to
leave the job after a year?
6. Could we continue this later? American Gladiators is
starting.
5. Aren't you the one who wrote that article Putnam
trashed?
4. Well, I'd like to finish my dissertation this year,
but I just recently got into cajun cooking, and I want to explore
that for a while.
3. I really need to know whether you're going to offer me the
job by tomorrow.
2. I always figure that the really good students can learn just
as much from true/false tests as from papers, so that's my
practice.
1. Mind if I take off my shoes? My feet itch.
"Letters to the Editor," Proceedings and Addresses of
the American Philosophical Association," Volume 69,
Number 2 (November 1995), page 131.
Posted with permission.
Academy Jokes
Why God Never Received Tenure at a
University
Because he had only one major publication.
And it was in Hebrew.
And it had no cited references.
And it wasn't published in a refereed journal or even
submitted for peer review.
And some even doubt he wrote it himself.
It may be true that he created the world but what has he done
since?
The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to
replicate his results.
He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
He expelled his first two students for learning.
Although there were only ten requirements, most students
failed his tests.
His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a
mountain top.
* * * * * * *
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW ELEMENT
By Jose Luis Preza
The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered
by university physicists. The element, tentatively named
"Administratium," has no protons or electrons and thus
has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron,
15 assistant neutrons, 70 vice neutrons, and 161 assistant vice
neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 247. These 247
particles are held together in the nucleus by a force that
involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles
called "morons." Since it has no electrons,
Administratium, is inert.
However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every
reaction with which it comes in contact. According to
discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium added
to one reaction caused it to take over four days to complete.
Without the Administratium, the reaction occurs in less
than one second. Administratium has a half life of
approximately three years, at which time it does not actually
decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which
assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons
exchange places. Studies seem to show that the atomic mass
actually increases after each reorganization.
Research indicates that Administratium occurs naturally
in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate in certain
locations such as governments, large corporations, and
especially in universities. It can usually be found polluting
the best appointed and best maintained buildings. Scientists
warn that Administratium is known to be toxic and
recommend plenty of alcoholic fluids followed by bed rest
after even low levels of exposure.
Posted with permission.
Link to
another page of philosopher jokes
Please send contributions to this page to Howard
Pospesel
(pospesel@miami.edu).
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