Philosophical Humor

[Thomas Knierim]

Part 1 - Philosophical Warning Labels

Solipsism Warning:

The consumer should be aware that he or she may be the only entity in the universe, and therefore that any perceived defects in product quality are the consumer's own fault.


Determinism Safety Advisory:

Every citizen be advised that despite the possibility that his or her acts are all entirely predetermined by the blind mechanical nature of the universe and are therefore unavoidable and inescapable, he or she will still incur a legal responsibility and liability for any torts, violations, misdemeanors, or felonies he or she commits.


Knowledge-Definition Warning:

Because knowledge is defined for the purpose of this product literature as "justified true belief", the manufacturer cannot prove that they "know" any of the information provided with this product to be true, correct, complete, or consistent because they cannot demonstrate their internal belief states through the principle of Philosphic Privacy.


Cartesian Evil Genius Alert:

The reader is advised that he or she may be subject to an illusion generated by an evil genius, and that his or her "sensory fibers" may be falsely manipulated at any time with neither advance warning nor any possible legal remedy.


Epistemological Denotation Warning:

The consumer must understand that due to the a-priori impossibility of assuring a shared denotation amongst independent agents, none of the advertising material, product literature, instructions, or safety warnings (including this one), associated with this product may contain what the consumer perceives to be factual information.


Non-Universal Ethics Notice:

Due to the possibility that a common notion of ethics are not universally shared by all sentient beings, and that therefore the manufacturer may have entirely different concept of "fairness",
"equity", "honesty", and "integrity" than the consumer, the consumer should not expect the product purchased to conform in any way to the advertised properties of the product.


Godelian Product Disclaimer:

As it has been proven that there are many true but unproveable statements, the manufacturer cannot be held liable for any of its unsupported product claims.

Penrose Addendum to Godelian Disclaimer:

Despite the above warning, the manufacturer is confident that all its product claims are true because of its mystically acquired and computationally unrepudiable organic intuition. Unfortunately, the manufacturer cannot in any way demonstrate that its intuition is correct, or indeed that it has an intuition.


Philosopher-General's Existentialist Tobacco Products Label:

Warning! this product has been found to cause cancer and ephysema, and to lead to increased likelihood of strokes and heart disease. However, as the Universe is a soulless waste inhabited by unthinking machines it doesn't matter in the least whether you smoke or not. Go ahead, light up, it's all the same to me if you live or die.

[rich]

thebigview


W A R N I N G

Read replies at your own risk.

[Thomas Knierim]

Part 2 - Why did the chicken cross the road?

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

[rich]

Part 2 .001- Why did the chicken cross the road?


Rich: To show off her new hose. :lol: ;)

[rich]

Originally posted by rich@Sep 23 2003, 10:08 AM
Part 2 .001- Why did the chicken cross the road?


Rich: To show off her new hose. :lol: ;)
Part 2 .002- Why did the chicken cross the road?


Rich: To prove it was not Kosher. :lol:

[Polaris]

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

I'm 42 but only for a couple more weeks. If I can't figure out the answer before my birthday then I guess I'm doo-d-d-doomed. :ph34r: ;)

[rich]

Saving Polaris from doomation! ;)

... ways to solve the problem! (From Douglas Adams, in his speech to Washington University ... else that has nothing to do with Douglas Adams, bugger off to another group. DNA himself ... obsessed with the number 42.) from douglas-adams-FAQ back to where you came from

plaguerized from the internet, Polaris, just to be a hero, by rescuing you.
:wub: :lol:

[Polaris]

OMG!!! I have DNA too!! :o

This is just getting to be too big a coincidence!! ;)



Thanks, Rich. You're my hero :)

[Thomas Knierim]

Part 3 - Causes of death of philosophers

Abelard: Nun
Altham: Logical pluracy
Althusser: Became history without a subject
Anaxagoras: Burned up
Anaximander: Infinite causes
Anaximenes: Evaporated
Anscombe: By intention
Anselm: Disease than which no deadlier can be conceived
Aquinas: Last causes
Aristotle: Excessive moderation
Bacon, F: Hit by idol in market place
Bacon, J: De trope
Bentham: Fell off his stilts
Bergson: Elan mortel
Berkeley: Divine neglect
Boole: Became inverted
Brandom: Choked by anaphoric chain
Calvin: Predestined
Camus: Found exit
Carnap: Left the material mode
Chomsky: Degenerative transformation
Comte: Went negative
Confucius: Lost his way
Copernicus: Revolution
Darwin: Became unfit
Dawkins: Suicidal genes
Democritus: Atomised
Dennett: Lost consciousness
Derrida: Deconstructed
Descartes: Pined away
Dewey: Became part of the environment
Diogenes: Exposure
Duns Scotus: Being univocal to an accident
Einstein: Diced with God
Empedocles: Cosmic cycle accident
Epictetus: Crime of passion
Epicurus: Nothing to worry about
Feyerabend: Everything went
Fichte: Non-ego takeover
Frege: Fell under a concept
Freud: Slipped
Galen: Lost his sense of humours
Galileo: Stopped moving
Gödel: Became incomplete
Habermas: A discourse condition
Hegel: Gave up the Geist
Heidegger: Not being in time
Heisenberg: Uncertain causes
Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice
Hilbert: Informal causes
Hobbes: Nasty causes
Hofstadter: Holistic trap
Hume: Committed to the flames
Husserl: Phenomenally bad luck
James, W: The will to leave
Jaspers: Essence exhausted
Kant: Found the means to his own end
Kierkegaard: Sick to death
Laplace: Prior arrangement
Leibniz: Monadnucleosis
Locke: No idea
Lucretius: Bumped off
Machiavelli: Intriguing causes
Malebranche: Occasional causes
Marx: Material causes
Merleau-Ponty: Perceptions blacked out
Mill: Depsychologised
Newton: Fluxions
Nietzsche: Overpowered himself
Ockham: Shaved beyond necessity
Paracelsus: Stabbed
Parmenides: No two ways
Pascal: The wagers of sin
Pavlov: Reflexed
Penrose: Became computable
Piaget: Undeveloped causes
Plato: Caved in
Popper: Falsified
Protagoras: Eaten by fish
Pyrrho: Scepticemia
Pythagoras: Squared on the hypotenuse
Quine: Became a free variable
Rand, Ayn: Objectified ego
Rorty: No foundations
Rousseau: Contract job
Russell: Cut himself shaving
Sartre: Nothing doing
Schopenhauer: Involuntary causes
Skinner, B F: Bad behaviour
Socrates: Consumption
Spinoza: Substance abuse
Tarski: 'Death'
Thales: Drowned
Turing: Halted
Whitehead: Procession
Wittgenstein: Became the late Wittgenstein

[sonrisa]

cute Thomas :)

ps in part 2 you forgot Bill Clinton: "I never crossed the road with that chicken. I only appeared to be crossing the road. That's not the same as actually crossing the road....' :)

[Thomas Knierim]

Part 4 - Tech Support, Nietzsche Style

When a user is calling in need of help, don't forget that he is a weakling. Only a loser would need to come groveling to you, begging for crumbs of help that may fall from your godlike lips. And he knows that he is a loser in the race of the weak and the strong, that his kind is doomed to extinction. Therefore, show him no mercy. Treat him with the utter contempt that he deserves. It is the law of nature that you should do so.

Key Phrases:

"You aren't very smart, are you?"
"I can't believe you call yourself a programmer!"
"Our product is obviously too complex and advanced for you. Please desist from using it -- you are soiling it."

Nevertheless, there may come a time when you actually must help the user, even though he is sucking away your magnificent intellectual vitality with his grotesque shambling confusion. He is a lower form of life and you must make him feel it, lest he take on ambitions of evolving to your level.

Key Phrases:

"Now I will read aloud the section of the manual that you failed to comprehend."
"You have ignominiously blundered on line 35, committing an error that a Mongoloid programming an abacus would be ashamed of."
"What you've done in your function foo is the coding equivalent of failing to empty your colostomy bag."

Alas, upon occasion there comes a time when it is obvious that the compiler is at fault. This is no reason to let the user feel superior to anyone, however. The design of a compiler is still far beyond his limited mental capacities. His duty is to worship, not criticize.

Key Phrases:

"The inner workings of the compiler are far beyond your antlike comprehension."
"That behavior is described in ANSI specification 21.11.45.7.3.8. You are familiar with that section, I assume..."
"Our software can behave in that manner only if it has been corrupted by long exposure to users of your caliber."

And finally, a user may eventually want you to code something for him, or send him an example. The user has asked something that is against the laws of nature. Such creatures as himself exist to serve you and not you him. Therefore such a request is impossible and against nature, and does not exist, and therefore never happened. Response is not possible.

[DavidS]

Interesting 'truth'-alluding humor, Thomas. It gave me a hew 'chuckles', but also a few 'winces'.

Originally posted by Thomas Knierim@Sep 29 2003, 06:59 PM
Treat him with the utter contempt that he deserves. . . . It is the law of nature that you should do so.

- something in that reminded me of the 'attitude' and 'behavior' of many "Nietzschean" parents I've seen, you know, the kind that get 'irritated' with and 'whack' a kid for stumble-falling-bruising himself and 'helplessly' 'crying'.

The 'phrase' "You aren't very smart, are you?" might come out like "How many times do I have to tell you to watch where you are going!?"

"Our product is obviously too complex and advanced for you. Please desist from using it -- you are soiling it." might come out like, "It's obvious to me that I just can't take you with me when I go out of the house; with you there's always sure to be trouble."

In my estimation, Nietzsche's 'spirit' was a very impatient and unempathetic, and 'he', consequently, was an extremely aggravated and lonely being. His arrogant hubris was so strong that he never 'bottomed out' and learned to spirit-'float'), but instead kept on spiraling into 'hellish' depths, as far as I know, while 'he' was on the world-stage at least.

Strikes me that people who are more (relative to others) 'gifted' by 'nature' seem to be the most susceptible to getting ego·'caught-up' and, for the duration of the 'whirl', 'lost' in the 'vortex' of what I am tickled to coin [I]The Nietzchean Heresy". (That's probably not really an 'original' thought or label, ..., though it's certainly the first time 'I' personally the 'connection' with such clarity. It's a good bet that some "Roman Catholic" 'official' somewhere made the equivalent connection and statement, I think.)

I've known quite a few Tech Support folks (as well as parents and teachers, etc.) who never 'succumbed' to such 'temptation', however.

[a random hack]

hey david,

what would you call the opposite of 'The Nietzchean Heresy', that is, the 'religion'?
nice points, btw :)

[DavidS]

Originally posted by a random hack@Sep 30 2003, 06:50 PM
what would you call the opposite of 'The Nietzchean Heresy', that is, the 'religion'?
Hmmm - only thing that comes to mind at the moment is "Namastéism" ^_^ -- maybe a word or phrase from what someone says here says will splat-stick as a 'nickname'.

[a random hack]

Hmmm - only thing that comes to mind at the moment is "Namastéism" -- maybe a word or phrase from what someone says here says will splat-stick as a 'nickname'.

Guess we'll see :)
How do you make make the 'funny' e (é), BTW?

[sonrisa]

Depends upon how your keyboard's set up. On mine I press the alternate button, then the vowel I want to accent. Also do ñ & punctuation marks (¡, ¿) that way.

[a random hack]

!COOL! but it doesn't work on this puter, will try when i get home...( yes, finally got puter working :D )

[sonrisa]

ook-oh! :o Random's back online at home! Be scared folx! :P

Seriously, keyboards are set up differently. I remember using one where you had to use number groupings - 151 was å, 161 was é, etc... dunno what you did if you needed to write those numbers. You could consult your users manual, tho I don't know if it would be in a Aussie manual. Up here tenemos una lengua segunda, so you'll find that info in our user manuals. You may have to go to the site of whoever manufactures your keyboard/pc & surf around in there.

[sahyo]

( yes, finally got puter working :D )


B) :D :D

[sonrisa]

¡Yo Random! Just took a mira segunda (second look) at your original post:

How do you make the 'funny' e (é), BTW?

the same way you did it the first time a-hole! <_<

[Thomas Knierim]

Sonrisa: Depends upon how your keyboard's set up. On mine I press the alternate button, then the vowel I want to accent. Also do ñ & punctuation marks (¡, that way.

¿Entonces hablas Español? ¿Donde esta tu casa?

Cheers, Thomas

[Polaris]

Originally posted by sonrisa@Oct 5 2003, 04:46 AM
¡Yo Random! Just took a mira segunda (second look) at your original post:

How do you make the 'funny' e (é), BTW?

the same way you did it the first time a-hole! <_<
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[a random hack]

the same way you did it the first time a-hole!
Oh, you mean by cutting and pasting? :D
a-hole? :lol: :blink: :angry: :lol:

and not online at home, only got puter working.

[sonrisa]

¡Tomås, me impresiona! Hablas 4 lenguas, ¿no?- alemån, inglés, español, y tailandes (¿o es siamés?)
A todos modos, sî, hablo (y escribo) español, pero es mås definimente mî lengua segunda. Réalmente, hablo algo qué llamamos "espanglish" aqui .Soy estadounidense, y vivo in Cincinnati, Estados Unidos. Pero pensé qué ya supo ese.

A todos modos, !comprendes mi usernombre! :)

[sonrisa]

Random, if you truly, honest to god cut & pasted that é, then lo siento, lo siento del fondo de mi corazon. But how the hell was I to know that it wasn't one of your many juvenile pranks? When I looked at that again I thought, aw hell, a gotcha! B)

[a random hack]

pranks?

<tries unsucessfully toi look TOTALLY innocent... :huh: >
:lol:

[DavidS]

Originally posted by a random hack@Oct 2 2003, 05:29 PM
How do you make make the 'funny' e (é), BTW?
It's something I 'learned about' and 'learned' 'I' could 'do' at 'will', if and as 'I' 'personally' 'desired' to 'do' so that is, in my days as an 'aspiring' word-processing 'professional'. B)

[An 'aside': Please know, readers who may have fallen prey to the 'temptation' to think that any kind of 'aspiration' is necessarily an 'indicator' of a thought-or-feeling of some kind of 'insufficienty' or personal 'inadequacy' as is, that I thought-n-felt I was super-'adequate' as a word-processing operator before going after these 'gems'. After all, MS Word has a menu from which you can just 'click' on any and all 'special' characters and symbols to insert them.]

Looping back to the subject at hand, there are ASCII (pronounced 'aski-2') equivalents for most 'special' characters. I may have first gotten it in HTML format, but what I now have is a chart of these equivalents in MS Word format. I'd be happy to reply-send these to you in an attached file if you email me (davidsundaram@cs.com).

The chart goes from 1, 2, 3 ... to 0 (identifying columns) across from left to right on the top, and from 0, 1, 2, 3 ... to 25 (identifying rows) from top to bottom down the left margin.

Read closely if you want to 'play' with this: An ASCII equivalent may be inserted by first holding down the Alt key and then typing a 4 digit number on your keyboard's number pad (not the number keys at the top of your keyboard). This number is the special character's row-followed-by-column chart-'designation', preceded by however many preceding zeros may be necessary to make the number have 4 digits in it, and then releasing the Alt key.

Alt-0233 will give you é, for instance (its row is 23 and it's in the 3rd column).

Even regular "characters" have ASCII equivalents - Alt -0033 will give you and exclamation point character (its row is 3 and it's in the 3rd column).

Some 'especially' special :lol: characters may not work in an 'environment' such as this, though they do in more 'sophisticated' program screen-environments. I tested it and nothing came up for the Euro character which is on the chart, for instance.

Anyone can generate his/her own equivalency 'chart' by sequentially entering an Alt followed by everything from 0001 to 0250 (which refers to all the "characters" ASCII 'knows', I think). But I recommend getting the already compiled chart for convenience.

Am always glad :) to share-spread this kind of 'wealth' (among others, of course ;) ) , so please don't hesitate to take me up on this if it bell-ring-peals to you, anyone.

[Thomas Knierim]

¡Tomås, me impresiona! Hablas 4 lenguas, ¿no?- alemån, inglés, español, y tailandes (¿o es siamés?) A todos modos, sî, hablo (y escribo) español, pero es mås definimente mî lengua segunda. Réalmente, hablo algo qué llamamos "espanglish" aqui .Soy estadounidense, y vivo in Cincinnati, Estados Unidos. Pero pensé qué ya supo ese.

Se llama Thailandés pero aqui la gente también habla "Thainglish" - una lengua única que a lo mejor tiene algun similaritudes con "Espanglish".

Hasta luego,

David: Looping back to the subject at hand, there are ASCII (pronounced 'aski-2') equivalents for most 'special' characters. I may have first gotten it in HTML format, but what I now have is a chart of these equivalents in MS Word format.

Actually, since the days of our forefathers, MS Windows is equipped with a built-in character table that includes ASCII codes. The long forgotten tool is called "Character Map" and is found in "Programs/Accessories/System Tools". :-)

Cheers, Thomas

[Thomas Knierim]

Part 5 - Philosopher Jokes

The First Law of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher.

The Second Law of Philosophy: They're both wrong.

===

Dean, to the physics department. "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper."

===

Descartes is sitting in a bar, having a drink. The bartender asks him if he would like another. "I think not," he says and vanishes in a puff of logic.

===

The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: "Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?" Sartre replied, "Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream". Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, "I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream -- how about with no milk?"

===

A philosopher went into a closet for ten years to contemplate the question, What is life? When he came out, he went into the street and met an old colleague, who asked him where in heaven's name he had been all those years.
"In a closet," he repied. "I wanted to know what life really is."
"And have you found an answer?"
"Yes," he replied. "I think it can best be expressed by saying that life is like a bridge."
"That's all well and good," replied the colleage, "but can you be a little more explicit? Can you tell me how life is like a bridge?"
"Oh," replied the philosopher after some thought, "maybe you're right; perhaps life is not like a bridge."

===

Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab.
Don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab.
Don't SMELL anything in a biology lab.
Don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab.
and, most importantly,
Don't LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department.

===

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. (Bertrand Russell)

===

Did you hear about the guy who went to the solipsist convention?
Nobody showed up.

===

Monism is the theory that anything less than everything is nothing.

===

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

===

How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?
"Hmmm... well there's an interesting question isn't it?"
"Define 'light bulb'..."
"How can you be sure it needs changing?"
Three. One to change it and two to stand around arguing over whether or not the light bulb exists.

How many Hegelians does it take to change a light bulb?
Two, of course. One stands at one end of the room and argues that it isn't dark; the other stands at the other end and says that true light is impossible. This dialectic creates a synthesis which does the job.

How many Zen masters does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change it, and one not to change it.
Three. One to change it, one not to change it, and one both to change it and not to change it.

How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the lightbulb and one to observe how the lightbulb symbolizes an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in a netherworld of Cosmic Nothingness.

How many Kuhnian constructionist philosophers of science does it take to change a light bulb?
You're still thinking in terms of 'incremental change'--what we really need is paradigm shift...we don't need a bulb with more attributes added on, we need ubiquitous luminescence.

Cheers, Thomas

[a random hack]

MS Windows is equipped with a built-in character table that includes ASCII codes. The long forgotten tool is called "Character Map" and is found in "Programs/Accessories/System Tools". :-)

thanks, will try this as don't have Office at home :)

[DavidS]

Originally posted by Thomas Knierim@Oct 7 2003, 07:27 PM
Part 5 - Philosopher Jokes
Lot's o' re·fined 'points' in there, Thomas - and chuckles galore - thanks - David