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I think, therefore I laugh.

- not your average book report by Anders Hofsten.


I think, therefore I laugh the flipside of
philosophy by John Allen Paulos is not your
average book.
J.A.P. digs with his flipside of philosophy deep into our
subconcious collective inds and e!poses a world full of
pu""ling dialogue, points out logical parado!es and rises up
to the challenge proposed by #udwig $ittgeinstein of a
serious work of philosophy entirely ade out of %okes.
&o say that this book is ade entirely out of %okes would
not be copletely fair, but it sure akes a habit in pointing
the out on a 'very( regular basis. )orally, this force of
habit would have been a tedious read, but serve philosophy
and especially the logical fallacies of this caliber and it not
only works perfectly, but coplients the arguents to the
fullest. &ake into consideration the chapter on logic which
akes especially strong points about sillygiss, for
e!aple*
People underestimate the extent to which play enters into
any serious intellectual endeavour. Doing something for the
what-if fun of it frees one from the shackles or goal-directed
plodding and sometimes leads to otherwise unlikely new
insights., J.A.P. writes in the introduction of sillygiss
and continues by describing a fairly siple one*
+,oe cars rattle.
-y car really is soe car.
,o no wonder y car rattles.+
.ranted, these sillygiss 'syllogiss, as they are norally
called 'pun intended(( is %ust silly as the nae suggests but
the fact that they are introduced like this 'and also /uite
early in the book( gives soe hints of what this book puts
focus on and how it is written. Infact, J.A.P. sees to have a
direct love affair with linguistic parado!es, if not for the
philosophical view on the attter but for the lin/uistic
atter itself. J.A.P. also takes atheatical theores,
proofs and theories into consideration whether it is to
e!plain or to confuse the reader on a certain sub%ect0 all in
good intellectual play as noted in the chapter about
sillygis.
+&he e!istence of boredo iplies the falsity of
behaviouris, but the details of the derivation
bores e.+
J.A.P. adresses, in one chapter, science fro a philosophical
perspective which inturn leads to a lot of 'soewhat
confusing( parado!es and eventually proves that the very
sae rules that have been talked about and applied in the
earlier chapters suddenly doesn1t apply anyore. I think,
therefore I laugh is nothing short of these intellectual
challenges and leaves no philosophical stone unturned, and
no ind unboggled. It is /uite possible that you will end
this book even ore confused about philosphy and
lin/uistics then how you entered it, however all in good
intellectual anners.
Behaviourism is the philosophy of social science
doctrine to the effect that psychological funcitoning
is defineable in terms of overt behavioural mani-
festations. It together with a mindless respect for
statistical formalism has led to the publishing of
whole barrels full of trivial reseach of the following
form! If property x "humour say# is operationally
defined in this way " number of chuckles elicited by
a book of cartoons# and property y "self-suffiency
say# is operationally defined in this way "number of
yes answers on some self-suffiency $uestion-
naire# then the correlation coefficient between x
and y is .%&' "at least for students in Prof. (eorge)s
*!+, psychology class#.
2ro the first page, I think, therefore I laugh will
grab you fro within, aking you raise your
eyebrows ore then once in an attept at trying to
decipher the relationships between the atheatic,
philosophic and lin/uistic e!aples and pu""les.
J.A.P. continously pokes fun at other philosophers
aswell as hiself as he writes down paragraph after
paragraph of propositions, solutions and plain errors
of the conteporary philosophical arts. I would
recoend this book to anyone even reotely
interested in language and philosophy, but I1d e!pect
every reader to read it ore then once, because this
book is definetly not for the weak. It is also
incredibly entertaining and the %okes is very clever
and ausing. If you can get it, get it. It1s well worth
the tie, and potential headache.

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