Theories are frequently recklessly abstract. They are often themselves regarded as jokes. Even Comedians and actors may find little use for theories of humor-and the average person none at all. We may turn this around by beginning with what people actually say, and not lose touch of concrete examples of humor as used in everyday language. Out of the examples themselves arise an understanding of humor. As an overview, here are the basic models which derive from such concrete analysis: Humor will be first analyzed as an emotion. It is odd to have to say that but it comes as news or with objection by people that humor can be regarded as an emotion. It will also be analyzed as a language-game according to ordinary-language philosophy. The types of humor will be extensively and intensively classified as types of metaphor. For each type of humor the presentation will often include: analysis, techniques, uses of the humor; the negative or opposite emotion; examples, both good and bad humor (the reader is left to determine which is which); the kind of thinking and personality people have who would favor a certain type of humor; and the way in which one type relates to other types of humor.

Humor is the least important, yet the most important thing in the world. People often value emotions as perhaps the greatest part of life, yet the following quotations suggest that it was and is one of the least known areas of our knowledge: The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1955) states, "Our knowledge of the topic, emotion, is much less complete than our knowledge of the other topics in the field of psychology." G. Mandler (1962): "The analysis of emotion has lagged behind other apparently less appealing topics. We know more today about verbal learning, psychophysical scaling, and discrimination in the rat, for example, than about the determinants of emotional behavior." D. O. Hebb (1949:235) wrote, "The discussion of emotion has been about as confused as that of any topic in psychology." A. I. Melden (1969:209) wrote, "Traditional views concerning the nature of emotion...persuasive as they may appear to be...are incoherent." (cf. Shibles 1974c, 1995b)

"We are still without an adequate general theory of laughter." (Morreall 1987:128) "Laughter is one of the unsolved problems of philosophy." (Monro 1963:13) Work on emotion in the twenty-first century shows inadequate analyses of emotion also. It is significant that if we are not clear about how emotions work, we cannot be too clear or effective in the area of therapy. And the controversy between Freudians, behaviorists, Gestaltists, and others still rages. Freudians are seen by many contemporary philosophical psychologists as believing in uncritical, mystical, pseudopsychological fictions. Ostow (1959) writing on Freudian psychoanalysis stated, "There is no systematic treatment of affect as a category in psychoanalytic theory."

Therapy in prisons is at present seen to be almost totally ineffective, and there is a swing back to abandoning it in favor of punishment. (cf. On blame see Shibles 1987a) In addition, if our knowledge of emotion is poor, our knowledge of humor will be poor. But we need not give up on our understanding of emotion or on therapy just yet. There is excellent work and clarification being done, especially in the area of philosophical psychology. The following is a brief presentation of one such clarification. It is based on the author's book, Emotion: The Method of Philosophical Therapy which may be consulted for a more extensive analysis. Only in 1995 has the cognitive-emotive theory been used to analyze emotion in aesthetics. For the purpose of analyzing humor, an account of emotions is necessary. Emotion may be defined as assessments which cause feelings and action in a certain context. The older naive and mentalistic term should be avoided. There is no evidence for thought or ideas as such. Instead all we have is self-talk, language use and imagery. Emotion words describe a) assessments, b) feelings, c) actions, and d) situations. For example, the emotion, revenge, involves the statement, "You did something bad to me, and I'll get you back." If revenge did not involve that sort of statement, it would not be revenge. It might be anger, depression, or some other emotion. We can distinguish one emotion from another partly because each involves different self-talk or statements. Emotion, then, is not just irrational, but rather involves thinking and reason. This opposes the view that emotion is irrational or involves merely feeling. Feeling may be defined as a bodily sensation such as pain, sensations of pleasure, or sensations of being tired. Emotion is not just a sensation. If it were it would make no sense to us.

The philosopher, E. Bedford (1964:91), wrote, "If an emotion were a feeling no sense could be made of them at all." For example, suppose emotion were just a feeling. Then it would be possible for one to merely walk down the street and suddenly fall in love only because the feeling came over one. A friend might ask, "With whom are you in love?" The reply comes, "No one, the feeling just came over me." Or we may just fall in love with a telephone pole because the feeling came over us.

If emotion were just a feeling, then if a person were jealous one might say, "Oh, you have that feeling again. I find that if you have a strawberry soda the feeling goes away." If we said this, others would not understand us. They would say, "No, you don't understand. I'm jealous because my best friend has decided to go out with someone else, and I find it hard to cope with it. Soda won't help."

Jealousy involves a statement, not just a feeling, and so dealing with the feeling alone will not eliminate the jealousy. We must resolve or change the thought-statement as well. We may think, then, of what will change the jealousy:

1) The situation changes. Your friend no longer decides to go with someone else.

2) You change your thinking. You perhaps decide that your friend is too undependable to keep as a friend.

3) Your feelings change. Your bodily feelings may be sedated with a drug, or you may be intoxicated, but when the drug or alcohol wears off, the problem of jealousy is still there. Nevertheless, the change in feeling can alter the emotion even if it will not eliminate it.

If someone is jealous we often ask about a context. For example, "Tell me about it. Who did what with whom?" The jealousy will also change if the statements regarding the context or situation change. A. I. Melden (1969:210) wrote, "No account of feeling does justice to the facts except by reference not only to bodily states, but also to the ways in which, in statement and action, those who feel emotions deal with the matters that confront them." Emotions, then, are not just bodily feelings or internal states. Emotion words, e.g., "jealousy," refer to and include all of the following: a) thinking, (language use) b) bodily feeling, c) action, d) situation. Our language misleads us here. We say, "I feel angry," or "I feel revengeful." Now, it may be seen that this is a category-mistake. Emotions are not just feelings. Thus, whenever we say, "I feel x," where "x" stands for an emotion, it is a category-mistake. "I think-feel emotion," is awkward, but more accurate. Even more ac curate would be, "I state-feel emotion." Wittgenstein (1967:#504) wrote, "Love is not a feeling." In order, then, to change an emotion we must change one or more of these four factors. To change or dissipate jealousy we must especially change our thinking. The situations or contexts themselves cannot change our emotion, but only our thinking about them can.

Basically, to change emotion one must change our self-talk. Thus, if we see that emotions are assessments which cause feeling, then we can change our emotion by changing our asessments. This view is in direct opposition to the common view that we cannot change our emotions. People seem to think that emotions cannot be changed-because they are imagined to be merely internal, passive feelings and, as such, they "just come over us" as pain does. Emotion is not like pain. It is not a mere sensation. Rather, we can have control over our emotions because we can have control over our assessments. If our reasoning is unrealistic or unclear, it leads to negative emotions such as anger, revenge, and hatred. Negative emotions may be regarded as being due to fallacious arguments, and as logical fallacies as much as is outright contradiction. Negative emotions are a contradiction to our humanity.

"But isn't it important to release our emotions rather than let them be dammed up inside of us?" Here one speaks as if emotions were fluids inside of us, as if emotions were things or entities there. The way emotions are changed is rather by communication and understanding what went wrong. They are not "released." What happens is that if one is angry one needs to talk about one's faulty assessments to find out what went wrong. This reveals the cause of the anger. One may walk twenty miles or hit a punching bag all day, and still be angry unless he or she changes the beliefs which cause the anger. To expend energy, become tired, or get drunk, do not solve emotional problems. They merely distract one temporarily. Also, time alone does not solve problems. There is no "release" of emotions. Rather, there are appraisals which constitute one's views and so one's problems. Also, if one is angry it is important to admit it and then do something constructive about it.

Thus far we have argued that emotion: is not just a feeling, involves rational and irrational statements, and can be changed by changing the statements. Several examples may help clarify. Suppose someone decides to type a paper and take care of children at the same time. The implicit statements may be, "I don't have much time. I'll just watch these children while I work. Children are quiet, do not make noise, and are gentle at all times." As soon as the typing begins, the children do scream, do make noise, do throw toys, do fight, and do spill soda on the typewriter, and are not gentle at all times. The typist becomes angry, angry because no typing is being done, angry because the children, "Shouldn't be doing that!"

The anger here was caused by faulty assessment. Children do do such things. They are often noisy. They do need guidance and attention. Anger and negative emotions are caused by faulty or conflicting assessments. If, in this case, the typist had assessed, "I will try to type, but I realize there will be noise, possibly fights, distractions in any case," then little or no anger would have arisen. Anger and negative emotions are due to ignorance, perceived conflict, and poor, or unrealistic reasoning. Whenever people are angry, it is a sign that they are confused or lack knowledge about something. This assumes that there is no purely medical, physiological cause. If that were the case it would, however, not be an emotion, but rather a feeling or physical state, possibly correctable with medication, e.g. drinking less cofffee which makes one physically depressed. Emotional depression is not the same as physical depression.

To take another example, suppose someone pours molasses all over your clothes and belongings. It is going too far. You become revengeful. You say to yourself, "She can't do that to me. I'll show her." You then pour molasses over all of her things. Does this make sense? First of all, it leads to further revenge. She then washes your car with a jagged rock and you do the same to her car in return. Revenge simply leads to further revenge. It does not make sense. Permanent feuds, vendettas and grudges result, and nothing is solved or resolved. It doesn't make sense to "get back" for its own sake, or to do the same thing back to others. It does not get at the cause of the problem. It is irrelevant to the problem. The person who pours molasses over all of your things has gone too far. It is to act insanely. To respond in the same way is equally insane.

It is not just a practical joke. Revengeful people show that they are angry, frustrated, or confused. One may have poured molasses over things because he or she has personal problems such as rejection by family or friends, loss of financial support, low university grades, etc. The person may have, in effect, been acting out or reaching out in some way for help when the problems were too great to handle. This might have become evident if after one pours molasses in getting back, the person committed suicide. How would you feel if you provoked someone to suicide? It may never make sense to get revenge. (cf. Shibles 1987a) The penal system in perhaps every society and for the most part, is an instrument of revenge. It does not rehabilitate. One needs to be clear here. People do not understand this. Therapy is not revenge and revenge is not therapy. The prison system is barbaric vindictive cruelty at the most primitive level.

If we do come to realize that revenge never makes sense, then whenever we are in a revengeful situation, we will find that we are much less vindictive, or not revengeful at all. Our revised assessments may be: a) It never makes sense to "get back" for its own sake. b) To take revenge is not to get at the cause of the problem. c) Revenge just leads to further problems. d) Revenge does not induce pleasant feelings. In opposition to the common belief, revenge is not "sweet." e) Revengeful behavior is a kind of ignorance. By changing our assertions in this way, one will find that revenge will seldom be experienced. If it is experienced it can be quickly restated and changed. Many people find that they are less revengeful as they grow older and as their reasoning changes. We may also become more revengeful if we become less critical, or if we are more enculturated to do so. Culture is often the ally of negative emotions and the enemy of positive emotions. Culture is often not our friend.

The method of reducing emotion to concrete statements, feelings, action and situation allows us to make emotion concrete. Emotion words are notoriously obscure and vague. Some people even erroneously think that words such as "love, anger, hate" are mystical or mysterious and cannot be defined. It seems to be rather the case that if we do not try to define and be clear about love, for example, we will not be able to love well or know if we are, or are not, "in love." The theory of emotions presented here allows us to become concretely clear about each emotion. Emotions will not, then, be lumped together, or be treated as entities or atomistic things in themselves. No two emotions of different types are alike, and no two emotions of the same type are identical. They are only vaguely similar. Also, because each statement or assessment involves feeling, every statement involves emotion. We, on the other hand, typically think that there has to be excessive feeling or violent action for there to be emotion. This is not the case.

Now it becomes apparent that stating even that, "The sky is blue," is accompanied by some feelings as well, and so may be regarded as an emotion. It may, in this case, be referred to as an aesthetic emotion. (cf. Shibles 1995b) But most statements can be regarded as involving nameless emotions. This is true even of the statement-with-feelings accompanying the assertion that you now are reading. The above analysis allows for a classification of emotion. Each emotion refers to a) statement, b) bodily feeling or sensation, c) action, and d) context. Each emotion word stresses one or more of these and may be classified accordingly. In the area of the emotion of humor, terms such as "tense, giddy, cheerful, thrill, and tickle" stress the bodily feeling or sensation. Humor emotion words which stress action are: apathetic, chuckle, crying, excited, frown, grimace, loving, rage, repulsed, furious, scowl, shy, smile, sneer, strut, etc. Emotion words which stress situation or context are: anxiety, desire, fright, greed, grief, hope, jealousy, joy of life, patience, patriotism, phobias, revenge, surprise, etc. Emotion terms which stress assessment are, for example, doubting, guilt, hope, love, stubbornness, trust, yes, and even humor. Basically, however, all emotions fundamentally involve assessments.

­ = does not equal

1. Emotion is not just a bodily feeling. E ­ F. Instead say, "I assess-feel."

2. Emotion is a cognition which causes feeling. E = (C -> F)

3. The emotive cognition is typically a value assessment. (Bedford 1964, Shibles 1974c, 1995bf, et al.)

4. Emotion can be changed by changing the cognition. We cause our own emotions. (See also the articles on emotive reflexives in the bibliography.)

5. Emotion is not innate or unalterable. (Personality can be radically changed.)

6. We cannot have exactly the same emotion twice, because both C and F change.

7. Negative emotion such as Anger or revenge is due to faulty assessments such as:

a) failure to accept reality. (cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations on #a, b)

b) failure to understand that we can only do that which is within our power.

c) misuse of value terms, such as thinking that something is bad in itself.

8. Emotion is not and is not the sort of (mentalistic) thing that can be "released." (We are wrongly told to "release" our anger, grief, jealousy.)

9. Emotion as such is not a cause of behavior. Only (C -> F) can be a cause.

10. Because a judgment or statement is cognition plus feelings (C -> F), any statement may be regarded as an emotion. (cf. Stoics: Zeno, Chrysippus)

11. There are metaemotions such as emotion about emotion, or enjoyment of emotion.

Each person has his or her own repertoir of emotions.

 -happy. You don't have to be angry. Just turn your mouth upside down.

-sad. Notice how to arrange the eyes.

 -angry. Am I stuck with this face all of my life?

or -no emotion at all.

THEN I HAVE AN EMOTION.

CAN YOU JUST BE ANGRY AT NOTHING? I'M ANGRY AT THIS CORNER OF THE PAGE.

IF WE JUST TELL HOW OUR BODY FEELS THEN IT IS NOT AN EMOTION, BUT A REPORT OF AN EMOTION.

I CAN'T HAVE AN EMOTION IF THIS IS ALL I AM.

AND I CAN'T HAVE AN EMOTION IF THIS IS ALL I AM-I NEED BOTH TOGETHER.

Can you just be angry at nothing? I'm angry at this corner of the page.

I just fell in love with this page. Turn it very gently.

I just fell in love, but I don't know whom I'm in love with?

Love is not a feeling.

(Wittgenstein 1967: #504)

I'll just have a mean sundae!

I couldn't help being angry. I forgot my head today.

The problem is that I'm jealous. Maybe if I just hit this punching bag it will solve all of my problems.

[MOLASSES PEOPLE]

"I showed him!"

Revenge therapy: Maybe you will improve your arithmetic by being in this cell. Try counting the bars.

ANGER MOTIVATES? HOW TO SOLVE A PROBLEM: FIRST BECOME ANGRY, THEN DO YOUR MATHEMATICS PROBLEMS. [IN LOGIC THEY SPEAK OF THE "FALLACY OF ANGER."]

YOU NEED NEVER FEEL CRITICIZED.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? HOW COME YOU ARE NEVER ANGRY? YOU MUST BE STICK, I MEAN SICK.

There are people who even feel bad because they are always happy.

I'M NOT GOOD FOR ANYTHING. I BURNED THE TOAST.

IS SOMEONE IN HERE WITH ME?

It makes no sense to feel bad or inferior. We can only do what is within our ability. Because cats cannot fly does not make them inferior to birds.

I LOVE YOU STICK WOMAN? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY "LOVE"?

C. Analysis of "Thought"

Another way of describing emotion is to say, along with Wittgenstein (1968) and other ordinary-language philosophers, that emotion is a "language-game." The emotion, anger, involves the use of language in a concrete context. Its meaning is rendered by both the language context as well as the situation. The approach of this book on humor is to reduce abstract terms to concrete, detailed language-games we play in our everyday experience. It is a reduction to intelligibility, not a reduction to a naive empiricism. This is another reason for the label Realhumor. We may also speak of the approach as pragmatism, practical philosophy, applied philosophy, or philosophical counseling to solve serious everyday problems.

Because emotion involves "cognition" or "thought", it is important to clarify what is meant by "thinking." What thought is seems to be a well kept secret, or even an ultimate mystery. Humans are often defined as a thinking animals, yet what is meant by "thinking" is seldom mentioned. "Thinking" has been thought of as consisting of ideas. But this is a circular statement which defines in terms of a synonym. We are said to "ex-press" or "press out" "ideas" into language. It is not clear how we could do this, how ideas could be "pressed" into a word. We are said to associate one atomistic idea with another in conformity with the laws of association, namely, by similarity of ideas, closeness of ideas, etc. This was once called "mental chemistry." But we do not have evidence that ideas are atoms, or that they combine as do molecules. "Ideas" are now regarded by some contemporary philosophical psychologists, and psychologists as being merely pseudopsychological, mentalistic fictions. In short, we have no evidence for ideas, thoughts, or concepts as being entities within us.

If ideas and thoughts are not small atomistic entities or things inside of us, what is thought? One way of approaching the problem is to look and see what we are doing when we are said to think. When one takes an exam one uses language. When people are said to know something, we usually expect that they can use language to describe it. By "thinking," we largely mean, then, "language-use." We do not catch nonverbal, atomistic ideas inside of ourselves which we then put into words. We do not know what thinking would be like if we had never learned a language. It is too late for us to find out, because we now have a language. We are already poisoned by it. We are caught in what I call the "linguo-centric predicament," so that we cannot get out of our language to find out what thinking would be like without language. (cf. Shibles 1972a)

Also, it will not do to say that we just have these atomistic ideas and then put them into words. Without language there is no "thought, " and with language, there is no "thought." There is no thought as such, period. There may be some imagery, however. "Thought" may, then, be defined as language-use: self-talk or talk aloud. When we say "I'm thinking one thing, but saying another," all we mean is that I am saying one thing to myself and another aloud. Thinking is language-use plus some imagery. A more precise and concrete definition of emotion may now be given: Emotion (including humor) is thinking defined as language-use plus imagery, which causes bodily feeling. To analyze or clarify emotions, a clear description must be given of a person's self-talk and talk aloud. Emotion is one's language and imagery which cause bodily feelings. One reason researchers have been unclear about emotion, and therefore humor, is that they have been unclear about how to describe thinking and emotion, as well as unclear about the relationship between thought and emotion.

Can you think ideas as such-not of anything-just an idea?

(Wittgenstein 1968: #154)

Another reason for confusion about emotion is that it was not clearly seen that emotion terms involve ethical terms. Also, there has been much confusion about how to understand and analyze ethical terms themselves. The case can be put simply. Ethical terms are terms such as "good, bad, right, wrong, ought, ought not, duty," or their equivalents. Thus, if we say, "I am bad," or "I am worse than others," these are ethical statements which lead to the emotion of inferiority. The emotion of "guilt" is based on the ethical statement, "What I did was bad."

Ethical statements, then, can lead to negative or positive emotions. "I am bad" leads to negative emotions; "I am good," leads to positive emotions. Does saying, "I am bad," make sense? To determine this an analysis of ethical terms is needed. Ethical terms may be characterized as being essentially open-context terms with a limited range of substitution instances. For example, "good" can mean a great many things. In themselves, ethical terms are meaningless. To become intelligibly meaningful, a specific empirical and descriptive meaning must be substituted and a specific context provided. Thus, to say, "I am bad," is a misuse of language and a failure to understand how ethical terms work. The statement in itself says nothing.

But people do often think that such value terms are meaningful in themselves and so think that, for example, they are in themselves, "bad" people. Confusions about ethical terms can in this way lead to assessment-feelings of, depression, neurosis, and inferiority. Suppose you are making toast for your spouse. You burn the toast, and he or she says, "Oh, no, not again!" You may interpret this as, "You burned the toast and you are a bad person." You "feel bad" all day about the incident. We often generalize or take the part for the whole, in rhetoric this is called "synecdoche." Because we did one thing wrong we tend to think we are generally hopeless or bad. But if the spouse notes that "bad" is open-context, the inferiority may vanish. If the toast is burned, it is admitted. It is a fact one must accept. "Yes, I did burn the toast. It's soot black." That one is bad is not a fact. If one wishes to improve one's toasting ability one may get a few loaves in and practice, or check to see if the toaster is working properly. But in no case need one "feel bad." One may scrape the toast, put more toast in, attempt to improve one's toasting skills, but also one can decide not to bother making toast.

"Bad" here reduces to, "I will try (or not try) to make toast without burning it." Nothing more need be involved. Thus, "bad" is open-context and when it is made concrete it just reduces to an empirical want or desire. It makes no sense to "feel" bad, inferior, criticized, or blamed. We can only do what is within our power, as Marcus Aurelius (1873) often pointed out. Instead of feeling bad, we can simply act to change unacceptable behavior. Feeling bad bakes no bread. Emotion involves ethical statements. Guilt, for example, is "I should not have done it," or "I did the wrong thing." The emotion of humor involves a positive value term, namely, "That is a mistake, but it is not bad " Rather, it is acceptable as a fact. The analysis of humor is the extended analysis of one emotion.

The mathematics of ethics: "It's wrong because it is immoral," is a circular statement, not a reason or argument. It is circular to define one ethical term by another. Wrong = immoral.

People often seem to misuse ethical language without knowing it.

If spinach is so good, how come it tastes so bad?

Our food is: