SAE Laughter · Overview: Judgment and Laughter
SAE 笑论·总论：判断力与笑
In §54 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant places laughter on the side of the agreeable: laughter is an affect arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into "nothing"; the understanding gains nothing from it, and the gratification reaches us by way of the body. This paper argues that laughter is an expression of the power of judgment, and that what laughter judges is that "the construct still has such a remainder." "Still" is taken as the union of three senses, presence, being in use and validity, with presence as the floor: at the moment of laughter, the construct and the remainder are both before one's eyes, and no one loses. Laughter does not decide whether the construct stays or goes.
The paper develops this claim in seven theses. (1) The formula and "still". (2) Focus: weeping and fear focus on the construct, laughter on the remainder. (3) The gap: laughter judges the gap between seeing and not having seen, which within one person is suddenness and between persons is persistence or contagion. (4) Judgment and inner laughter are two sides of one event: inner laughter is the jolt of cannot-not, felt, directed at this remainder of this construct; it is not an emotion, and outward laughter is its expression. (5) The layer of a laugh is set by the layer at which the laugher stands at that moment. (6) The subject is at 13DD and its negation is reflexive; laughter at 12DD is registered as tendency. (7) What laughter expects of others is openness to being questioned; powers of judgment intersect without being identical.
On this basis the paper parts ways with Kant at three points: whether what one lands on is "nothing" or a remainder; whether laughter is the cannot-not of a judgment, felt, or an affect whose gratification reaches us by way of the body; and whether, toward others, one imputes agreement to everyone or stays open to questioning. The paper also draws a line against Schopenhauer's incongruity theory: he says perception has beaten the concept and the concept has lost; this paper says that laughter does not rule on victory or defeat, and that no one loses. The scope begins at 12DD (with 11DD merged in) and ends at 15DD; perceptual laughter lies beyond the lower bound, and looking at each other and laughing, at 16DD, is registered only, not developed. This paper is the Overview of the SAE Laughter Series; the four papers that follow treat laughter as tendency (11DD+12DD) and the laughter of 13DD, 14DD and 15DD respectively.
Keywords: Self-as-an-End, SAE, laughter, judgment, remainder, Kant, Schopenhauer, seeing and not having seen, two sides of one event, cannot-not, non dubito
0. Introduction: The Question and the Position
Why do people laugh? The history of philosophy offers roughly three routes. The Hobbesian route ascribes laughter to "sudden glory": a person sees some act of his own that pleases him, or a defect in someone else, and suddenly raises himself up. The route of Kant and Schopenhauer ascribes laughter to incongruity: an expectation suddenly comes to nothing, or a concept suddenly fails to fit the thing it refers to. The Freudian route treats laughter as the saving and discharge of psychical expenditure. Each route sees something, but none treats laughter as a judgment: on the first two, laughter is a reaction that comes after a judgment; on the third, it is an outlet for energy.
The position of this paper is that laughter is an expression of the power of judgment. Laughter judges that "the construct still has such a remainder." A construct here is any way of grasping that is currently in operation: an expectation, a definition, a reading of a sentence, a set of manners, a person's understanding of his own situation. A remainder is the point that this construct has not fully taken in, and that is nonetheless right there before one's eyes. At the moment of laughter, one sees this point, and sees that it and the construct are before one's eyes at the same time.
This position comes from the SAE (Self-as-an-End) framework. SAE takes the remainder as the core concept organizing all of its domains, and holds that every construct has a remainder and that having a remainder is not a defect. Laughter is the most everyday witness to this claim: when we laugh, we are precisely seeing a remainder as a remainder, and not as the construct's failure. The SAE aesthetics series has argued that a subject who has seen a construct fully unfolded along some dimension cannot not acknowledge it as beautiful, and that on the three rays of mathematics, physics and causation beauty also occurs on the remainder, namely as the beauty of the remainder (SAE Judgment and Aesthetics, §2.2). The modality of laughter is likewise cannot-not; the difference between the two lies in the object: the acknowledgment of beauty can fall on the full unfolding of a construct, whereas laughter falls on the remainder alone. In this sense the Laughter Series is the reverse side of the aesthetics series.
It should be said at the outset what is new here and what is not. "Laughter is a judgment" is new relative to Kant; relative to contemporary psychology it is not new, since McGraw and Warren's (2010) benign violation theory already grounds laughter in appraisal. What this paper sets out to explain is something else: how a construct and a remainder enter a single laugh together. The headline distinction it offers to other theories is "no one loses": laughter does not pass sentence. At the moment of laughter, the construct and the remainder are both before one's eyes; whether the construct afterwards carries on as before, is modified or is abandoned is not settled by this laugh. The distinction stands out with particular clarity in the contrast with Schopenhauer (see Section 2); the comparison with Hurley, Dennett and Adams (2011) has to wait until the original book has been read closely, and this paper does not claim the distinction as uniquely its own.
The paper develops this position in seven theses. The seven are a programme of argument: each comes with positive instances and pressure cases, and the load-bearing proofs are delivered in the corresponding sections and in the four papers that follow. Section 1 first clears the ground with Kant; Sections 2 to 7 take up, in turn, the formula and "still", focus, the gap, judgment and laughter, layer and reflexivity, and commonality without identity; Section 8 marks out the scope and the exclusions; Section 9 sets out the division of labour among the four subsequent papers; Section 10 registers the remainders of this paper.
1. Kant's Laughter and Three Divergences
1.1 Laughter in §54
Kant discusses laughter in the Remark to §54 of the Critique of Judgment, placing it on the side of the agreeable arts, where it stands alongside gambling and music as a kind of "play". His definition is that laughter is an affect (Affekt) arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. He immediately adds a restriction: the transformation must not be into the positive opposite of what was expected, for that would after all still be something, and could often cause sorrow (kann oft betrüben).
Kant does not drive judgment out of laughter. He says that this play of thought arises from the change of representations in the power of judgment; after its expectation is disappointed, the mind turns back to try again, and so moves back and forth between two standpoints. But he holds that the understanding gains nothing here, and that the real cause of the gratification is the movement thereby produced in the body, not what happens in the mind before it.
He gives an example. An Indian at an Englishman's table sees beer foam up and pour out of a bottle and is astonished; asked what astonishes him, he says that it is no wonder it comes out, the wonder is how you ever got it in. Kant expressly points out that we do not laugh because we think ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man.
1.2 Three Divergences
This paper parts ways with Kant at three points.
First: does one land on "nothing" or on a remainder? Kant says the expectation turns into nothing, and explicitly rules out "the positive opposite". This paper says that what one lands on is neither nothing nor the positive opposite, but a remainder. The positive opposite would take the place of what was expected and press attention down onto the construct's failure, which is why it causes sorrow; a remainder, by contrast, is before one's eyes together with the construct, and attention falls on the remainder. Kant himself says that the mind turns back to try again and moves back and forth between two standpoints; the first standpoint can still be returned to, and this is precisely the phenomenon of "the construct still being before one's eyes" (see Section 2).
Second: what laughter is. For Kant, laughter is an affect whose gratification comes by way of the body. This paper holds that judgment and inner laughter are two sides of one event: seen structurally, it is a judgment; seen from the side on which it is felt, it is laughter. Inner laughter is the jolt of cannot-not, felt, directed at this remainder of this construct; it is not pleasure. Pleasure, if it comes, is an accompanying emotion (see Section 5). This paper does not deny the bodily movement; the body takes part all the same. The divergence concerns what laughter is, not whether the body takes part, and the two accounts do not exclude each other.
This divergence also touches what Kant himself prized most. §9 asks whether, in the judgment of taste, the pleasure precedes the judging or the judging precedes the pleasure, and calls the solution of this problem the key to the critique of taste; his answer is that the judging comes first. §12 then says that the consciousness of the purposive play of the cognitive powers is the pleasure itself. The two passages have to be read together, and §9 should not be read in isolation as a claim about the order of two psychological events. This paper does not decide on Kant's behalf whether pleasure and judging are successive or identical; §9 and §12 must be read together. The divergence of this paper lies only here: what forms two sides of one event with judgment is not pleasure but laughter itself; in this paper, pleasure is an emotion that may come or may not.
Third: the expectation toward others. §8 says that the judgment of taste does not postulate that everyone will agree; it only imputes agreement to everyone, expecting assent from others. This is Kant's account of the judgment of taste, and he did not apply it to laughter: for him laughter belongs to the agreeable and does not, to begin with, claim universal assent. Because this paper places laughter on the side of judgment, it has to answer the same question. Its answer is that what laughter expects of others is openness to being questioned: I expect you to tell me your judgment, but I do not expect in advance that your judgment and mine will intersect (see Section 7). At 15DD and 16DD the stance toward others takes two further forms. The knowing smile (会心之笑) lets the place of those who arrive remain theirs; "not doubting that whoever arrives here would see it this way" is what this looks like within a single laugh. Looking at each other and laughing is mutual non dubito: each takes the other as an end; in laughter it takes the form: I do not doubt that you will laugh, and you do not doubt that I will laugh. Both still differ from Kant: they neither impute agreement to everyone (§8) nor say that everyone ought to agree (§19; see 7.4).
1.3 The Passage on Naivety: The Same Example Read Side by Side
§54 contains a passage on naivety (Naivität). Naivety is the breaking out of the sincerity originally natural to humanity against the art of dissimulation that has become second nature. Here too Kant writes that the illusion which ordinarily carries great weight in our judgment suddenly turns into nothing, and the rogue in us is, as it were, unmasked. At the same time sincerity breaks out, and seriousness and esteem are mixed into this play of judgment.
This passage can be read side by side with this paper on the same example. Kant has three things here: the illusion that turns into nothing; the sincerity that breaks out; the esteem that comes with it. On this paper's reading, the art of dissimulation is the construct and sincerity is its remainder. What turns into nothing, in Kant's own sentence, is the illusion itself; to read it as the weight the illusion carries in judgment is this paper's reading. On that reading, it indicates only which layer "still" reaches at this moment, and presence remains: the unmasked art of dissimulation and the sincerity that breaks out are both before one's eyes at this moment. The two descriptions may be speaking of different layers of the same thing. The difference lies only in what this laugh judges: Kant says it is the illusion coming to nothing; this paper says it is the construct and the remainder being before one's eyes together. On this paper's account, what becomes of the construct's validity afterwards is not settled by this laugh (Section 2). Section 2 will return to this passage by way of "The Emperor's New Clothes".
The example of the Indian also deserves attention. On Kant's account, the one laughed at is the Indian; on this paper's account, the construct that has the remainder is our own: we had assumed he would be astonished at the foam, but what astonished him was the getting in. "At whom one laughs" and "whose construct the remainder belongs to" come apart here, and this is precisely the question Section 4 has to deal with.
2. The Formula and "Still"
2.1 Laughter Judges a Relation
The formula of this paper is this: the object of laughter is neither the remainder nor the construct, but the judgment that "the construct still has such a remainder." The judgment falls on the relation between the two, not on either end. This safeguards the condition under which a remainder enters at all: without a line drawn, there is no remainder; a remainder can only be seen as the remainder of some construct, and what laughter sees is precisely this "of".
"Such a" is deliberate (这么一个, "such a remainder"). "Such" indicates that it can be pointed out, that it can be shown to someone else; "a" indicates that it can be singled out on its own, so that this laugh must be able to name the specific remainder it has picked out. Whether it is one item, or several items combined into one, is decided by what is judged on this occasion; the singular wording does not presuppose uniqueness. Laughter does not need to know how many remainders the construct has in all; it needs only this one to stand out. What is required here is individuation, not enumeration.
2.2 The Three Layers of "Still"
The word "still" (还) has at least three layers of meaning: still present, that is, the construct can still be called to mind, understood, looked back on; still in use, that is, people still act according to it; still valid, that is, its original claim still holds. The three layers are nested: being in use and validity both presuppose presence. This paper takes the union of the three, with presence as the floor; being in use and validity are the layers above it, and which layer a given laugh reaches varies from case to case.
Presence means being before one's eyes at this moment, not the continued existence of the construct. Presence is the content of this judgment, namely that the construct and the remainder are before one's eyes together; it is not a further condition added outside the laugh. Being in use and validity only record which layer this laugh reached; they are not conditions of laughter either. "Still" always attaches to the construct, never to the remainder.
| Which layer "still" reaches | Example | What the laughter is like |
|---|---|---|
| Still valid | A pun: both readings hold. Peek-a-boo: while the face is covered, perception's "gone from sight" holds, and prediction has already caught "still there" (for the moment of uncovering, see separately Paper I, 2.2) | Light laughter; nothing is damaged |
| Still in use, no longer valid | "The Emperor's New Clothes": the procession goes on, but no one any longer thinks he is wearing clothes | Satire |
| Present only | Diogenes' plucked chicken: the definition "featherless biped" can still be called to mind, but it has lost its standing | Teasing; ends in absorption |
2.3 No One Loses
"No one loses" rests on the floor of presence, and means that laughter does not pass sentence: at the moment of laughter, the construct and the remainder are both before one's eyes; neither is erased, and neither is declared the loser. Whether the construct stays or goes is recorded separately from this laugh: judgments about whether it is still valid or still in use may come before the laugh, after it, or alongside it; they are made separately by the subject, and this laugh does not make them on the subject's behalf.
Diogenes brought a plucked chicken into the lecture room and said, "Here is Plato's man"; according to Diogenes Laertius, "having broad nails" was then added to the definition. The original does not record that the audience laughed; what follows is this paper's reading. If anyone laughed, then at the moment of laughing Plato's definition and the chicken were lying side by side; the patching of the definition came after the laugh, and this paper calls it absorption.
There is a further reason why laughter does not judge winning and losing; see Section 3: the share of attention that falls on the failure of the construct is fear or weeping, not laughter; the two shares can accompany each other, each recorded on its own.
The ending of Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" makes this point very clearly. After the child says it out loud, the emperor himself feels that it is so, yet he walks the procession to its end, more proudly than before, and the chamberlains go on carrying the train that is not there. The construct is still in use, and the remainder too lies before everyone's eyes. The original does not record who laughed; the reader's laughter has several layers: at the emperor, at the ministers, and also at the crowd who had all just been pretending to see. This is exactly the situation described in Kant's passage on naivety: the art of dissimulation is still before one's eyes, and sincerity breaks out.
2.4 Drawing the Line Against Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer's incongruity theory is the classic form of this tradition. The World as Will and Representation, vol. I, §13, says that laughter arises from the sudden perception of an incongruity between a concept and the real objects that had been thought through it. Vol. II, chapter 8, goes further: this victory of perceptual knowledge over thought gives us pleasure. For him, laughter is the outcome of a contest: perception has won, and the concept has lost.
The divergence of this paper lies at one point: whether laughter is the outcome of a contest. This paper says that laughter does not rule on victory or defeat; by Section 5, that pleasure, if it comes, is an accompanying emotion, not laughter itself. Whether "beating" means that the concept is cleared out of experience is a separate question; Schopenhauer need not commit himself to it, and this paper does not answer it on his behalf.
The pun can serve as a shared test case for both sides, but it is not a ready-made counterexample. Vol. I, §13, already deals with the pun: two different concepts are brought together by one word; he also allows that an object may be correctly subsumed under a concept in one respect while showing an incongruity in another. So "both readings hold" does not directly refute him. A comparison would require aligning, item by item, the word, the concept, the object, the judgment withdrawn and the representation retained, and then seeing what each description says; until that step has been taken, this paper does not declare either side refuted.
Schopenhauer's strengths must also be granted: his definition already contains "sudden"; he distinguishes two paths, from perception to concept and from concept to perception; and he discusses one's own concepts as well as those of others. This paper does not read him as a static theory on which "wherever there is incongruity, there must be laughter."
2.5 Comparison with Hurley et al. (To Be Settled)
According to available accounts of the book, Hurley, Dennett and Adams (2011) see humour as the reward for detecting, in a mental space, a false belief that has been adopted, and clearing it out. If so, they tie laughter to whether a belief stays or goes: detect, clear out, reward. The laughter of this paper does not decide whether the construct stays or goes; it is tied only to the remainder. But the "belief" of the one account and the "construct" of the other may not be at the same level: what they clear out is a specific belief, whereas what this paper speaks of is a construct. This comparison can be settled only after a close reading of the original book and a side-by-side check on a common example, 下雨天留客天留我不留 [Translator's note: an unpunctuated sentence that, depending on how it is punctuated, reads as a host's refusal of a guest or as a guest's request to stay; see Paper II]; this paper does not answer on the book's behalf, and for now does not let the comparison bear weight.
3. Focus: Laughter, Weeping, Fear
3.1 Where Attention Falls
The formula says what laughter judges; it remains to say how laughter differs from weeping and from fear. All three may face the same construct and the same remainder; the difference lies in where attention falls. Weeping and fear both focus on the construct: weeping is the construct lost, "it's gone"; fear is the construct threatened, perhaps about to be gone. Laughter focuses on the remainder: the construct is before one's eyes, but attention is drawn away by this one remainder.
In chapter 6 of Leviathan, Hobbes pairs laughter with weeping. Laughter is sudden glory; weeping is sudden dejection, caused by accidents that suddenly take away some vehement hope or some prop of one's power. What is taken away is precisely the construct one leans on, which fits "weeping focuses on the construct lost."
For a case of fear, one may read Hermite's 1893 letter to Stieltjes. In it he says that he turns away with dread and horror from this lamentable plague of continuous functions that are nowhere differentiable. Weierstrass had presented such functions as early as 1872, some twenty years before the letter; the remainder had long since been seen, and also registered, yet Hermite still focused on the threatened construct, namely analysis's ordinary understanding of continuous functions. This paper takes this one sentence as the basis for a contrastive reading of focus on the construct; the letter does not record whether he laughed or not, and this paper does not infer from the absence of a record of laughter that he did not laugh. The same remainder was later taken up by fractal geometry and became a beauty of the remainder; by then attention had shifted to the remainder itself.
3.2 The Same Situation, Laughter or Weeping
The distinction of focus explains a common experience: in one and the same situation a person can laugh or weep, and often alternates between the two. In despair, the subject is convinced that there is no way left: when attention falls on this conviction, one weeps; when it falls on the self that is still searching, one laughs. The situation has not changed; what has changed is where attention lands. When it lands on the latter, whether that seeker is seen as one's futile self (self-mockery) or as one's own direction (the laughter of despair) depends on which layer one stands at (Paper IV, 2.3).
Nor need attention land in one place only. At the same moment one share can fall on the remainder and another on the failure of the construct: laughing and weeping at once, laughter within embarrassment. Laughter is the share that falls on the remainder; the shares are recorded separately (5.4). Within a single burst of laughter one can even distinguish several layers of different laughter; Paper IV, Section 7, offers a trial reading of one such case.
This also explains why the person made the butt of a joke often does not laugh. The onlooker focuses on the remainder; the person made the butt may be forced to pull his attention back onto his own construct and the place where it has been damaged, and so is embarrassed. This gives only one explanation of the embarrassment; the outcome still turns on his own judgment: of people made the butt in the same way, some are embarrassed, and some burst out laughing too.
3.3 Cost Sorts Kinds; It Does Not Draw the Boundary
Kinds of laughter can be divided by "what the remainder costs the laugher": hearty laughter at no cost, wry laughter at some cost, the laughter of despair at an extremely heavy cost. But cost does not separate laughter from weeping. The laughter of despair faces an extremely heavy cost and is still laughter; what separates laughter from weeping is whether attention falls on the remainder or on the construct. Cost is thus one dimension of laughter, not its boundary.
Cost brings emotion, and the emotion can be bitter; when bitterness comes, laughter is still laughter. The two characters of the Chinese word for wry laughter, 苦笑 (literally "bitter laughter"), name exactly these two layers: the bitterness is the emotion, the laughter is the jolt of cannot-not (Section 5).
One more misreading must be guarded against: "focusing on the remainder" does not mean disregarding the construct. A remainder can only be the remainder of some construct; at the moment of laughter the construct is still before one's eyes as background, or else the remainder could not show itself at all. What the laugher sees is always the relation; it is only that the centre of gravity of attention lies on the side of the remainder.
4. The Gap: Seeing and Not Having Seen
4.1 The Gap Is Indexed by Person and Moment
"Still has" presupposes a prior state in which it was taken to be absent. What laughter judges is therefore not merely a remainder, but the gap between seeing and not having seen. The "not seen before" here need not mean that its absence was ever asserted; it simply was not seen. This gap has to be recorded by person and by moment:
- Within one person: the one who did not see is me of a moment ago. The gap closes in an instant, and so is sudden. Laughing on hearing a pun is of this kind.
- Between persons: I have seen and the other has not; the gap stays open, and so it is persistent. Sly laughter and the laughter of love are of this kind: what they are waiting for is precisely the other's sudden moment. Conversely, when the other has seen and I have not, what I laugh at is my own not having seen; this is contagious laughter.
"Suddenness" has not been abolished; it is the temporal form the same structure takes within one person; "persistence" is the form it takes between two persons. The table below lays out the four positions. The table lists only the epistemic configuration with respect to some object r at some moment; it is not a table of necessary and sufficient conditions for laughter, and the laugher's judgment about this configuration may itself be wrong (laughter on a misjudgment, Paper II).
The seeing grid · me and the other × seen and not seen (for some object r, at some moment)
| I see | I do not see | |
|---|---|---|
| The other sees | Laughing at the same thing: two subjects each judge and each laugh. If I have just crossed over from the right-hand cell and the other has long been here, this can be the knowing smile (for the conditions, see Paper IV, Section 6). Looking at each other and laughing is mutual non dubito; it belongs to 16DD and lies outside the scope | Contagious laughter: I take the other's laughter as a clue that he has seen r, and what I laugh at is the reflexive object "I have not seen r" (requires 13DD reflexivity) |
| The other does not see | Sly laughter · the laughter of love · derision · teasing (sly laughter could point it out but does not; teasing points it out by laughing; the laughter of love cannot say it all even when it speaks) | Neither side has seen r: this configuration alone yields no gap with respect to r; a mistaken identification is not ruled out, nor is a separate reflexive object |
The grid is a slice of a single moment; time has to be recorded separately. Sudden laughter is one and the same person moving, within a moment, from "I do not see" to "I see"; the knowing smile can be such a crossing between cells, with the other long since in the left-hand column and me only now crossing over, but the crossing itself is not enough (for the conditions, see Paper IV, Section 6). When two people are both now in the upper-left cell, it is not ruled out that one of them has just come over from the right-hand cell.
4.2 The Boundary with the Beauty of the Remainder
Laughter and the beauty of the remainder both focus on the remainder, so the focus of Section 3 cannot tell them apart. The beauty of the remainder exists only on the three rays of mathematics, physics and causation (SAE Judgment and Aesthetics, §2.2), so the boundary drawn in this section is needed only on those three rays. What separates the two is the gap: the beauty of the remainder dwells on a remainder already seen, and does not take the gap between seeing and not having seen as what it judges; laughter judges precisely this gap. The same remainder can first provoke laughter and then become a beauty of the remainder; or first provoke fear and then become beautiful, as in the case of Hermite. For the full boundary between laughter and several of its near neighbours, see the three destinations and the gap table in §5.4.
4.3 Seeing, Not Absorption
Remainder: A Portable Method (M-00E) distinguishes a remainder's being pointed out from the question of whether it has entered operation. Laughter attends to the former. That is why the gap within one person is often gone by the second telling: the remainder has been seen and the gap has closed, yet it has not entered operation. Whether it really is gone the second time must be checked case by case; this thesis does not settle it in advance.
An old joke between old friends is the central pressure case of this section: both have long since seen it, yet they still laugh. There are two candidate explanations: what is laughed at is an outsider's construct, which the outsider still has not seen; or one stands once more in the place of the self that had not yet seen, re-enacting the original gap. The second candidate holds for a single person too, and rereading an old joke alone falls under it. Children who ask again and again to hear the same joke apply pressure of the same kind. The second candidate can have an observable consequence (a candidate): if what is laughed at is a return to the self that had not seen, then the order and the pauses of the telling still matter, and if the punchline is given away first, there is no laugh. If this consequence cannot be checked either, it must be stated that, for the time being, it has no independent means of verification. The two candidates are not presumed to be exhaustive; if cases to which neither applies hold up, this thesis must be narrowed.
4.4 Contagion, Canned Laughter, and Laughing More in Company
Laughter is contagious. The listener takes another's laughter as a clue that the other has seen some remainder; if one has not yet spotted it oneself, one will find oneself funny too. The clue may be wrong: outward laughter can be empty (see the inner–outer grid in Section 5).
Canned laughter has to be taken case by case, according to conditions. A recorded laugh track may have captured real laughter, or may be merely dubbed in; knowing that it is a recording does not automatically rule out taking it as a clue that others once saw something. Only when the viewer mistakes a dubbed track, behind which there is no corresponding judgment, for the reaction of others who have judged the same remainder, and this mistake enters into the viewer's own laughter, is it laughter on a misjudgment. What was mistaken must be spelled out: whether anyone was present, whether they really laughed, whether what they saw was this very remainder.
A group hearing a joke laughs more readily than one person alone. One candidate explanation is that "whom one is laughing at" is sometimes multi-layered. The same remainder can belong to several constructs at once: the construct of the person in the joke; my own construct, into which the joke has first led me; and the construct we share, so that when someone else laughs, I know we were all inside it a moment ago. The third layer exists only in a crowd. This is a mechanism hypothesis that has not yet obtained empirical warrant, and competing explanations remain. Chapman's (1973) experiment with children, as reported secondhand: children laughed most when a companion was also listening, less when a companion was merely present, and least when alone. What is added from being alone to having a companion present is the effect of social presence; only the further increment, from a companion being present to a companion also listening, fits this paper's mechanism. Neither increment can be uniquely attributed on the strength of the ranking alone.
4.5 Onlooker's Laughter and Comparative Laughter
In the seeing grid, the cell "I see, the other does not" must be divided between two kinds of laughter. Hobbes's second cause is seeing some defect in another, comparing oneself with it, and suddenly applauding oneself. This is comparative laughter: one's own purpose enters the construct laughed at, and it belongs to Paper III (14DD). The other kind is onlooker's laughter: someone who laughs on reading of the man who marked the boat to find his sword (刻舟求剑) need not compare himself with that man of Chu. Kant's example of the Indian is the touchstone of onlooker's laughter: he says explicitly that we do not laugh because we think ourselves cleverer. The candidate layer for onlooker's laughter is 13DD; see Paper II.
5. Judgment and Laughter: Two Sides of One Event
5.1 Inner Laughter Is the Jolt of Cannot-Not
Three claims about laughter and judgment often coexist: laughter is an expression of the power of judgment; laughter is judgment; once the judgment is made, laughter comes irresistibly. The first sounds as though the judgment comes first and laughter is its expression; the second, as though the two are identical; the third, as though one follows the other.
The position of this paper is that judgment and inner laughter are two sides of one event. Seen structurally, it is a judgment; seen from the side on which it is felt, it is laughter. Inner laughter is the jolt of cannot-not, felt, directed at this remainder of this construct: it is felt, not an emotion. Gladness, relief, a warmth in the heart belong to emotion; they may come along, or they may not; the emotion may even be bitter, and the laughter is still laughter. The two characters of 苦笑, wry (literally "bitter") laughter, name exactly these two layers: the bitterness is the emotion, the laughter is the jolt of cannot-not. Outward laughter is the expression of this event, and may be present or absent.
The three claims thus each find their place: "laughter is judgment" means that inner laughter and judgment are one event; "laughter is an expression of the power of judgment" refers to outward laughter; "irresistibly" means that once this event occurs, both sides are there at once.
The Laughter Series bears this claim on its own. The Chisel-Construct Identity (Theorem One) of SAE Judgment and Aesthetics §3.1 says that chisel and construct are two sides of one event; it supplies only the shape of "two sides", and can serve as an analogy, not as a proof of this thesis. What genuinely corresponds to aesthetics lies elsewhere: aesthetics says that the subject who has seen cannot not acknowledge; the acknowledgment does not rest on emotion, which may come along or may not; beauty is not the same as pleasure (§5.1). Inner laughter in the Laughter Series corresponds to this "cannot not acknowledge", not to pleasure. Both are cannot-not; the difference lies in the object.
The second divergence from Kant also lies here: Kant has gratification handed on by way of the body; this paper says that what forms two sides of one event with judgment is not gratification but laughter itself; gratification, if it comes, is an accompanying emotion, and the body is the expression (see 1.2).
5.2 Cannot-Not
Laughter is laughter one cannot not laugh. This modality is conditional. Its premises are that a share of attention falls on the remainder (Section 3) and that a gap is judged (Section 4); once this occurs, laughter is irresistible and does not wait for consent. It does not guarantee that whoever sees a remainder must laugh: Hermite saw that function, and if at that moment his attention fell only on the threatened construct, the premise was not met; the surviving record of his dread does not, by itself, suffice to rule out other shares of attention or an unrecorded inner laughter.
Cannot-not works from the inside out. One need not laugh aloud; laughter felt inwardly is laughter too, and what can be held back is only the expression. To ask "did you laugh inwardly?" is to ask whether there was the jolt of cannot-not, and whether that jolt was directed at this remainder of this construct (5.4), not whether it was amusing or whether one was glad. Suppressed laughter shows that inner laughter and the outward expression can come apart: the laughter has already arisen, and one can only strain to hold down the expression. It supports the division of labour between inner and outer; it does not testify to the sufficient condition of this section. Polite laughter is the other side: there is no judgment, and a laugh is simply put on. The table below lays out the four combinations of inner and outward.
The inner–outer grid · inner × outward
| Laughs outwardly | Does not laugh outwardly | |
|---|---|---|
| Laughs inwardly (what the Laughter Series treats) | Laughing aloud: both judgment and expression are present | Suppressed laughter · knowing without showing: only the expression can be held back |
| Does not laugh inwardly | Polite laughter · accommodating laughter · laughing along: expression without judgment; classed among the exclusions | No laughter |
This paper discusses only the upper row.
Cannot-not is not being forced. Forced laughter is making someone laugh at a certain point by means of consequences, claiming a judgment in his stead; this is colonization, and it is excluded. Cannot-not comes from the judgment itself; being forced comes from consequences imposed from outside.
5.3 A Wrong Judgment Is Still Cannot-Not
Cannot-not follows the judgment, not the judgment's correctness. Someone who has believed a false rumour laughs at another's action as absurd, and only later learns that things were not so; the laugh has happened, but the judgment was wrong. So laughter cannot prove that it has judged correctly. The evidence is first-personal in any case: the question is "did you laugh inwardly, and at what?" "Seeing" and "the gap" can be checked independently, by asking who knew what and when, without relying on laughter to establish them. Nor is someone who does not laugh thereby judged not to have seen.
5.4 Pressure Cases: Calm Error-Correction and Insight
Someone calmly points out a condition he had previously missed, and does not laugh. Does this show that judging a gap is not the same as laughing? A stronger pressure case is insight: a suddenness within one person, the gap closes, the missed condition is seen, and yet often there is no laugh.
One cannot infer backwards from "he did not laugh" that his attention was not on the remainder; that way any counterexample could be explained away. This paper offers two things: a classification, according to where attention goes once the gap has closed; and a set of independent markers, distinguished by what the person subsequently does and says, not by laughter.
Once the gap has closed, attention has three destinations:
- On the remainder: the old construct is still before one's eyes, and that point lies there as "such a one". This is laughter.
- Back on the failure or threat of the old construct: the "I got that wrong just now" of retracting a misjudgment; the person made the butt (3.2); one's cherished theory showing a hole on the spot. This is embarrassment, fear or weeping (Section 3).
- Forward, on a new construct: the missed condition is at once taken into a new solution. This is absorption; insight and calm error-correction belong here.
The three destinations are not mutually exclusive. Attention can be mixed: at the same moment one share can go forward and one look back, so that the "aha" already carries a laugh; or one share can fall on the remainder and one on the failure, laughter within embarrassment. Laughter is the share that falls on the remainder; the shares are recorded separately.
Here a boundary is borrowed from M-00E, and one must state precisely what it provides. M-00E distinguishes whether an item of content has entered a designated operation, and says that later incorporation does not retroactively rewrite the earlier non-incorporation (this paper calls entry into operation absorption). So the point that has been absorbed is no longer a remainder with respect to the new construct, but still is one with respect to the old; the new construct's taking it up does not prevent one, at this moment or a moment later, from turning back and pointing it out as what the old construct had not fully taken in. "Where attention falls at a given moment" is not a proposition of M-00E; it is the Laughter Series' own claim, belonging to the focus thesis of Section 3.
The three shares can be distinguished by what the person does and says afterwards:
- The marker of pointing out: showing "such a one" to others; being able to say how the old construct relates to this spot, e.g. "So that's how I was thinking; this is the spot I missed."
- The marker of failure: the talk returns to one's own reading, e.g. "How could I have got that wrong?"; wanting to retract, to justify, to cover up.
- The marker of absorption: the repair follows at once; the condition is immediately put to use; the talk moves forward, to the new solution.
Crossing these three destinations with the gap makes clear where laughter stands among several of its near neighbours:
| Attention falls | Gap present (closing now) | No gap (long since seen) |
|---|---|---|
| On the remainder | Laughter | Already pointed out, no gap: on the three rays of mathematics, physics and causation, this is the beauty of the remainder (SAE Judgment and Aesthetics, §2.2); an old joke on its second telling, once the gap has closed |
| On the failure or threat of the old construct | Embarrassment, fear, weeping | Fear: the remainder long since seen, attention on the threatened construct, as with Hermite (on the reading of 3.1) |
| On the new construct (absorption) | Insight; calm error-correction | Everyday operation: the remainder has long since become part of the construct |
The three rows are three destinations, not three mutually exclusive cells: a single event can have a share in several rows at once, each recorded separately. The table is read within one person (the "gap present" column is the discovery made on this occasion); the persistent gap between persons (Section 4) is not in the table.
One and the same discovery often has both shares. Attention going forward onto the new construct is insight; attention turning back and seeing that the old construct still has such a remainder is laughter. Hence the common pattern of an "aha" first and a laugh after: "Why didn't I think of that?" That second laugh is at the old construct, and is close to self-mockery. In The Act of Creation (1964) Koestler places "haha" and "aha" within one structure; he is an opponent this case cannot get around (from memory; page numbers to be verified).
This threshold cannot be gamed from either end. The "so that's where it is" moment is not, by itself, enough: insight also has a jolt of cannot-not, only it is directed at "the new solution works", whereas the jolt of laughter is directed at "the old construct still has such a remainder." The modality on both sides is the same and the difference lies in the object, for the same reason as in 5.1 and in the contrast with aesthetics. So the question to ask is where that jolt falls. Many people engaged in calm error-correction will say there was a "so that's where it is" moment, only it was not amusing; if that jolt was directed at the old construct's remainder, then on this paper's account it is inner laughter, and cannot be counted as not having laughed merely because it was not amusing. Conversely, one cannot call every case without laughter absorption.
This paper states the falsification condition explicitly, using only clean test cases: if there is a case in which the marker of pointing out is present, the markers of failure and of absorption are both absent, the gap is genuinely there, and yet the person reports that at that moment there was no jolt of cannot-not directed at this remainder, then the sufficient condition of §5.2 must be narrowed. Mixed cases, in which several sets of markers are present at once, count neither as falsification nor as confirmation; they are filed under "mixed attention" in Section 10.
6. Layer and Reflexivity
6.1 A Laugh Goes with the One Who Laughs
The layer of a laugh is set by the layer at which the laugher stands at that moment; the layer of the construct laughed at is recorded separately. With the same joke, different people laugh at different points: they laugh at different constructs, see different remainders, and stand at different layers. This is the first proposition of Psychoanalysis IV, §3.1, that the object, not the stage, determines the layer, applied to a single laugh. "Object" there means what is faced, which activates the layer, not the construct laughed at. So the layer of the construct laughed at does not determine the laugher's layer; nor do the name given to a laugh or the use it is put to afterwards (Paper III). The unit of analysis is therefore a single laugh, that is, one person's judgment, at one moment, about the remainder of some construct, and not a joke. One story can hold several laughs: those of the people in the story, of the teller, of the reader.
Only by recording the two layers separately can several cases be stated precisely:
- Peek-a-boo: the construct laughed at is perception's "gone from sight", close to 10DD; what catches it is the prediction of 12DD; counted by the laugher's layer, it is at 12DD, and is registered as tendency (6.2).
- The laughter of despair: the construct laughed at is the subject's grasp of the situation as "there is nothing left", which has little to do with whether there really is a way out, and belongs to the situation of the 13DD subject; the one who judges stands at 15DD. Counted by the layer of the construct, it would fall back to 13DD, which does not fit its structure. Paper IV defines it by four conditions, and by that definition it is at 15DD; for the testable part, see Paper IV, 2.3.
- Stories whose originals record no laughter: Kong Rong's retort to Chen Wei (孔融答陈韪), Dong Shi imitating Xi Shi's frown (东施效颦), marking the boat to find the sword. None of the originals records anyone laughing; the one who laughs is the reader, and so the layer is set by the reader.
6.2 The Subject and Reflexivity
Following the correspondences of the SAE Psychoanalysis series, the subject is at 13DD: the position that can carry out negation reflexively, that can negate its own negation. 14DD corresponds to the Ego-Ideal line of Freud's superego (purpose); 15DD is non dubito, which by the definition in SAE Methodological Overview §1.7 is a subject's not doubting that the other is an end in itself, and is unidirectional; the Psychoanalysis series calls it Cert.
12DD has the power of prediction but not subjecthood. The laughter of infants, and the laughter of animals in which there is not yet any division between subject and other, is therefore registered as laughter as tendency, not signed off as judgment; chimpanzees, on the strength of mirror self-recognition, are read as having entered the early stage of 13DD (Paper I, 4.2), and are considered separately. "Tendency" is a cell the Laughter Series sets up for itself: part of the structure of construct and remainder has already appeared, and attention already falls on the remainder, but this judgment does not yet have an owner who knows that it is he who is judging. Laughter as tendency has an object that can be stated: it tracks a definite relation, such as the same face coming back to its place, and not merely the strength of a stimulus; it also has visible behavioural markers: with a different person, or in a different position, the infant smiles less (see Paper I). Whether it conflicts with Kant's account of disappointed expectation still has to be checked against the same event and the same content of expectation; the mere fact that it has an object cannot settle the matter.
From 13DD on, laughter is judgment and can also be corrected: the judgment in laughter on a misjudgment can afterwards be negated by oneself, because the subject can negate its own negation. Being able to correct does not mean correcting every time, nor does it mean that the laugh was already justified. Retraction is a matter for reflexive negation, not for the laugh. The tendency of 12DD cannot do this; it has no reflexivity.
6.3 Developmental Time
Developmental time gives only the earliest point at which a given layer is available; which layer a given laugh is at is determined by which layer the object activates. Psychoanalysis II marks the emergence of 13DD with the mirror test (18 to 24 months), and the SAE paper on education, Education as Subject-Condition, takes fear of death (ages 3 to 8) as a proxy for 13DD. This series lists the two addresses separately: it reads mirror self-recognition as an early sign that 13DD is available, and fear of death as a proxy for 13DD. This reconciliation is a candidate reading of this series, and does not rewrite the two papers on their behalf.
6.4 Terminology Lock
In this series, "subject" (主体) refers exclusively to 13DD; "self" (自己), when used in its technical sense, refers exclusively to the Cert of 15DD. In English this "self" is written as Cert or self-with-non-dubito, never as bare "self", because the Psychoanalysis series uses self from 13DD on (self-without-purpose). The 自 ("self-") of the everyday Chinese words 自嘲 (self-mockery) and 自救 (self-rescue) is in its everyday sense, not the technical sense of 15DD.
7. Common, Not Identical
7.1 Intersection, Not Identity
Laughter, like beauty, is not the same for everyone. With the same joke, some laugh and some do not, and those who laugh do not necessarily laugh at the same point. Our powers of judgment intersect, so laughter is often shared; but each person keeps his own power of judgment, so laughter is never something allotted from above.
7.2 What Is Expected Is the Other's Judgment
Laughter carries an expectation toward others; in everyday speech it is the familiar "Didn't you get it?" In §8 Kant says that the judgment of taste does not postulate that everyone will agree, but only imputes agreement to everyone. Placing laughter on the side of judgment, this paper answers differently: what laughter expects of others is the subject's openness to being questioned. I expect you to tell me your judgment, but I do not expect in advance that your judgment and mine will intersect (this governs what lies within the scope; for 15DD and 16DD, see 7.4). "Didn't you get it?" is really asking "What did you see?"
This is the way this series hands a laugh over to questioning: it says that this judgment is not exempt from questions; it does not say that every laugher is already willing to be questioned. "Didn't you get it?" can also be mockery, and the words alone cannot certify that the speaker is really open to disagreement.
This answer differs from Kant's as follows: Kant imputes agreement to everyone; this paper imputes nothing to anyone and only stays open to questioning. The most natural thing for someone laughing by contagion to say is "What are you all laughing at?", which is the other face of the same openness: he takes the others' laughter as a clue, and, under the way of being questioned that this series advocates, he is also prepared to be told that the clue was empty.
7.3 Not Laughing Is Not Failing to See; Forcing Someone to Claim a Judgment Is Colonization
Two corollaries follow. First, someone who does not laugh is not thereby judged not to have seen; he may have seen something else, his attention may be on the construct, or he may have a judgment of his own. Second, making someone laugh at a certain point by means of consequences, claiming a judgment in his stead, is colonization. This series takes colonization in the broad sense: substituting one's own purpose for the other's own law. Inviting someone to take another look, or discussing whether something has been misread, is not colonization; colonization lies in substituting consequences for the other's judgment. Being forced into an expression must further be distinguished from being forced to claim a judgment: the inner–outer grid allows the former without the latter, and forcing out an expression does not thereby force out a judgment.
Power both forbids laughter and compels it. Laughing at the jokes of the powerful to keep them company is, insofar as one is forced to claim a judgment one has not actually made, the other face of the same colonization; being forced only into an expression is another matter (see below). The forbidding of laughter can serve as material for a question: why is satire forbidden? If laughter were merely a convulsion of the diaphragm, what would forbidding it be for? This series' answer is that laughter is the judgment that "this construct still has such a remainder", and this judgment cannot be ordered not to occur. But the fact that laughter is forbidden does not, on its own, prove that laughter is judgment.
7.4 One Structure
Openness to questioning and the stances of the two kinds of 15DD laughter in Paper IV are one structure. Toward another person, I do not require him to laugh at the same point; I am only open to his judgment. Toward the future self (the laughter of despair), I do not require it to make good on today's direction; I am only open to it, and this direction does not require others to obey it either. Toward the one who said it long ago (the knowing smile), I have arrived where he is, letting that place remain his, and I do not require him to turn back and confirm me; not doubting that every subject who has reached this point would see it this way is what this looks like within a single laugh. In all three, one does not impose one's own judgment or direction on another. SAE Judgment and Aesthetics has made it explicit that calling something beautiful is a claim that can be right or wrong (§4.3); the Laughter Series' openness to questioning agrees with this.
The non dubito of the knowing smile has to be kept apart from Kant. Kant imputes agreement to everyone (§8) and says that everyone ought to agree (§19); the knowing smile extends its non dubito only to subjects who have reached this point, whether earlier or later, and not to those who have not arrived, and it makes no demand on anyone. It is non dubito, not prediction; doubt and questioning remain. This non dubito does not conflict with the "not expecting an intersection in advance" of 7.2: it does not expect anyone to come here, nor does it require anyone to laugh at the same point; it concerns only those who have already arrived. At 16DD, looking at each other and laughing is mutual non dubito, each taking the other as an end; in laughter it looks like this: I do not doubt that you will laugh, and you do not doubt that I will laugh. Laughter is what is felt inwardly; it can only be lived through by the person himself, and others cannot claim it for him; they can only not doubt, that is, acknowledge the other as the owner of that jolt (Paper IV, 7.2; this step is a claim of this series, Paper IV, Section 9). "Not expecting an intersection in advance" governs the unidirectional case within the scope; at 16DD, the intersection is something both sides do not doubt, neither demanded nor set in advance (Paper IV, Section 7).
8. Scope and Exclusions
8.1 Scope
This series deals with construct and remainder. Counted by "the layer at which this laugh occurs" (Section 6), the scope begins at 12DD and ends at 15DD, matching the span of the SAE Psychoanalysis series. 11DD is merged into 12DD and filed under laughter as tendency. Psychoanalysis I registers 11DD as the lower-bound remainder, and takes the retrospectivity of memory (the remainder of the 11DD law of memory) as the bridge to 12DD; this series, following the grouping of Aesthetics Ray 9 (11DD+12DD), merges it in, on the grounds that early laughter already relies on the familiar things that memory supplies; see Paper I for details.
8.2 Beyond the Lower Bound
9DD is merged into 10DD. The laughter of tickling has to be split into two stages. Before the hand has touched, the child is already laughing: what is predicted is another person's action, directed at objects and relations in the world, and by this series' criterion it belongs to the tendency of 12DD (Paper I). The laugh after the touch belongs to the perceptual laughter of 10DD.
The perceptual layer has a prediction of its own. When people tickle themselves the tickle sensation is weakened, because the sensory consequences of one's own movement are computed in advance and cancelled (Blakemore et al. 1998). This study explains why self-tickling does not tickle; it does not supply a layer assignment, and this series borrows it only to show that the perceptual layer has a different kind of prediction. The dividing line, "is the prediction directed at objects and relations in the world, or at the sensory consequences of one's own movement?", is a candidate account of this series, not a completed structural proof.
As for laughter from laughing gas, this series cannot identify any judgmental content in it, and places it too beyond the lower bound; this is not a universal assertion about its internal processing. This series neither denies, nor treats, nor closes off this stretch.
8.3 Beyond the Upper Bound
16DD requires two subjects who do not doubt each other. Three things must be distinguished here. Laughing at the same thing is two subjects each judging and each laughing, each counted at his own layer; it is within the scope. Tacit understanding is laughing at the same thing plus common knowledge: I know that you know, and you know that I know; it is still counted layer by layer, each at his own. Looking at each other and laughing is mutual non dubito, each taking the other as an end; I do not doubt that you will laugh, and you do not doubt that I will laugh: that is what it looks like in laughter, for laughter is something felt, and can only be not doubted (Paper IV, 7.2). That is the laughter of 16DD, which this series registers only, without developing it (for examples, see the Zhuangzi, "The Great and Venerable Teacher", "they looked at one another and laughed, with no disagreement in their hearts" (相视而笑，莫逆于心), and the laugh at the end of The Killing Joke, on this paper's reading, Paper IV, Section 7). The knowing smile is unidirectional non dubito, at 15DD; looking at each other and laughing is mutual, at 16DD.
In sly laughter, derision and the laughter of love, the person opposite is the one laughed at, the one waited for; he too may be judging, but whether the two sides constitute mutual non dubito is a separate matter. The other of the laughter of despair is the future self, which is not present at this moment.
8.4 Within the Scope but Not Judgment
The following kinds of laughter occur in people within the scope, but are not judgment in this series' sense:
- Polite laughter: producing a laugh, without judgment, for one's own purposes.
- Forced laughter: making someone laugh at a certain point by means of consequences is, insofar as it claims a judgment in his stead, colonization; being forced only into an expression is another matter (7.3).
- Merely accommodating laughter in conversation: the aspect that is only an accommodating expression or sound, in which no judgment has occurred. Provine's research shows that most laughter in everyday conversation follows remarks that are not funny. He counted outward laughter, not inner laughter; this series does not infer from his findings whether there was inner laughter in these cases; it excludes, by definition, only the merely accommodating aspect, and does not infer from them that this series can account for only a minority of laughs.
- Laughing along without judgment: laughing only because one hears laughter, without taking it as a clue to look at what one has not seen.
"Coming from outside" cannot serve as the criterion: the occasions of peek-a-boo and of joke-telling are also produced by others. Contagious laughter has a judgmental side and is within the scope.
9. The Division of Labour Among the Five Papers
This series consists of the Overview and four papers. Each paper first answers its own question and then turns to connections (within SAE) and contrasts (outside it).
| Paper | Its question | Main contrasts |
|---|---|---|
| Overview: Judgment and Laughter | The seven theses; the seeing grid and the inner–outer grid; the three destinations of attention and the independent markers; scope and exclusions | Kant §8, §9, §12, §19, §54; Schopenhauer; McGraw & Warren; Koestler; Hurley et al. (original not yet read) |
| I Laughter as Tendency (11DD+12DD) | How prediction without subjecthood catches "still there"; the contribution of 11DD; play and animals; the two stages of tickling and the boundary with perceptual laughter | Sroufe & Wunsch; Parrott & Gleitman; Bateson; Blakemore et al. |
| II 13DD | This judgment is my judgment: laughter does not decide whether the construct stays or goes; self-mockery, contagious laughter, the correction of laughter on a misjudgment, onlooker's laughter | Socratic irony; Kierkegaard; Schopenhauer on irony; Bergson |
| III 14DD | One's own purpose enters the construct laughed at: the laughter of triumph and wry laughter, comparative laughter and derision; laughter as judgment and doing things with laughter | Hobbes; Schopenhauer on derision and wry laughter; Freud, "Humour" |
| IV 15DD | The laughter of despair: the subject is convinced there is no way out and yet still searches, defined by four conditions, its other being the future self. The knowing smile: arriving where another has long been and letting that place remain his; not doubting whoever arrives here is how it shows within a laugh. Looking at each other and laughing (mutual non dubito) registered at the upper bound | Beckett, Watt; Schopenhauer on humour; Descartes; Plessner; Zhuangzi, "The Great and Venerable Teacher"; The Killing Joke |
10. Remainders of This Paper
The construct of this paper cannot be closed either. The following questions await further argument and testing:
- Old jokes: that both sides have long since seen it and still laugh is the central pressure case for the third thesis; the two candidate explanations are only candidates and are not presumed exhaustive; the observable consequence of the second candidate (4.3) is still to be verified.
- Calm error-correction and insight: handled by the three destinations and independent markers of §5.4; if a clean test case is found, that is, the marker of pointing out present, the markers of failure and absorption both absent, the gap genuinely there, and yet the person reports no jolt of cannot-not directed at this remainder, the sufficient condition of §5.2 must be narrowed. For mixed cases, see the next item.
- Mixed attention: this paper grants that attention can be mixed and recorded in shares; how the boundaries between shares are to be checked case by case awaits more cases; cases in which several sets of markers are present at once count neither as falsification nor as confirmation (5.4).
- Completeness of the axes: "whose construct × cost", "who laughs × at whom", the seeing grid and "the layers of still" stand side by side; this paper does not claim that they are minimal, independent or exhaustive.
- Hurley et al.: before the headline distinction bears weight, the original book must be read closely.
- Cross-series synchronization: inner laughter corresponds to the "cannot not acknowledge" of aesthetics, not to pleasure; the "tendency" cell. A draft of Aesthetics Ray 8 once set up a similarly named cell, "aesthetic tendency", which the final version did not include; whether to restore it is for the aesthetics series to decide. Psychoanalysis I lists chimpanzee deception under 12DD; this series, on the strength of mirror self-recognition, reads chimpanzees as having entered the early stage of 13DD (Paper I, 4.2); the two have yet to be aligned, and that is for the Psychoanalysis series to decide.
- 16DD: looking at each other and laughing is registered only, not developed.
- Dimensions: laughter has many dimensions because laughter is the power of judgment. This sentence is kept as an observation that comes after the conclusion; on its own it cannot prove that laughter is judgment.
Conclusion
Laughter judges that "the construct still has such a remainder." At the moment of laughter, the construct and the remainder are both before one's eyes; laughter does not decide whether the construct stays or goes, and no one loses. The share of attention that falls on the remainder is laughter; what falls on the construct's loss or threat is weeping and fear. What is judged is the gap between seeing and not having seen, which within one person is suddenness and between persons is persistence or contagion. Judgment and inner laughter are two sides of one event; inner laughter is the jolt of cannot-not, felt, directed at this remainder of this construct, not an emotion, and outward laughter is only its expression; so laughter is irresistible, and yet it can judge wrongly. A laugh goes with the one who laughs: the laughter of 12DD is tendency, and from 13DD on laughter is judgment and can be corrected. Laughter is open to others; it neither imputes agreement to everyone nor insists on intersection. At 15DD, this series examines separately the laughter of despair, open to the future self, and the knowing smile, which lets the place of those who arrive remain theirs; at 16DD, looking at each other and laughing is mutual non dubito, which this series only registers.
Thus the Laughter Series parts ways with Kant at three points, and with Schopenhauer on victory and defeat. It also gives SAE's basic claim about the remainder its most everyday witness: having a remainder is not a defect. When we laugh, we are precisely seeing a remainder as a remainder.
References
Within SAE
- Han Qin. SAE Methodological Overview: The Chisel-Construct Cycle (V3.1). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18842449. §1.7 and the V3.1 revision notes checked against the current page.
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (I): Id — The Me Without a Self. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321143
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (II): Ego — The Self Without a Purpose. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321314
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (III): Superego — The Self With a Purpose. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321417
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (IV): Cert and Unification — The Self Beyond Doubt and the Four-Layer Framework. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321534
- Han Qin. Education as Subject-Condition: A Philosophy of Education. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18867389
- Han Qin. SAE Judgment and Aesthetics — In Tribute to Kant (the SAE aesthetics general framework). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710. §2.2, §3.1, §4.3 and §4.4 checked against the current English page; §5.1 checked against the original sentence on the current Chinese page.
- Han Qin. Remainder: A Portable Method (M-00E). The distinction between pointing out and whether something has entered operation, and the principle that later incorporation does not retroactively rewrite earlier non-incorporation: key sentences checked (§1.1, §1.5, §2.3, §4.2, §5.3); this paper calls the latter "absorption".
- Han Qin. Aesthetics Ray 8, The Beauty of Perception, published version 2026-09-27 (Zenodo record 22988390). The published version does not include the "aesthetic tendency" cell; the text draft v0.1 (2026-08-31) had set it up, and was not published.
- Han Qin. Aesthetics Ray 9, The Beauty of Cognition. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22989143. The grouping (11DD+12DD) checked.
External
- Kant, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), §8, §9, §12, §19, and the Remark to §54. English translation after J. H. Bernard.
- Schopenhauer, A. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. I, §13; vol. II, ch. 8. English translation: Haldane & Kemp.
- Hobbes, T. Leviathan (1651), ch. 6.
- McGraw, A. P. & Warren, C. "Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny." Psychological Science 21(8), 2010.
- Hurley, M. M., Dennett, D. C. & Adams, R. B. Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. MIT Press, 2011. The original not yet read.
- Provine, R. R. Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. Viking, 2000. Checked only secondhand.
- Chapman, A. J. 1973, experiment on the social facilitation of children's laughter. Checked only through a secondhand report.
- Blakemore, S.-J., Wolpert, D. & Frith, C. "Central Cancellation of Self-Produced Tickle Sensation." Nature Neuroscience 1(7), 1998, 635–640. DOI: 10.1038/2870. Abstract checked.
- Hermite, C. Letter to Stieltjes, 1893. The sentence checked; the edition of the correspondence not collated.
- Andersen, H. C. "The Emperor's New Clothes", 1837.
- Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, book VI, §40.
- Koestler, A. The Act of Creation. 1964. The triad of bisociation in humour, discovery and art given from memory; page numbers to be verified.
- Zhuangzi, "The Great and Venerable Teacher" ("Dazongshi") 《庄子·大宗师》. The two passages "相视而笑，莫逆于心" checked in an electronic edition.
- Moore, A. & Bolland, B. Batman: The Killing Joke. DC Comics, 1988. Only the final laugh is used, in paraphrase; the dialogue is not quoted.