Philosophy of Comedy (PHIL 180.001)
Instructor: Matthew Kotzen. This class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. in Caldwell 105.
What makes something humorous? Is there an analytic connection between humor and laughter, or is the connection merely a contingent one? How are evaluations of humor related to aesthetic evaluations more generally? What is it for a joke to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or in some other way ethically problematic? How do some jokes exploit epistemological fallacies and/or other philosophical confusions?
Matthew Kotzen’s webpage