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Appeal to Humor |
| Description: | ||
| The argument attempts to persuade by invoking feelings of good humor and laughter. To laugh with someone seems to imply agreement with his position. Often the argument takes the form of a cleverly worded or humorous slogan. | ||
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| Comments: | ||
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| Calling a position "absurd" or "laughable" without actually telling a joke should probably be considered an Ad Hominem - Abusive rather than an Appeal to Humor. Sometimes a good comedian can make us laugh merely by saying that something is funny, but generally this is more abusive than humorous. Be careful not to confuse Appeal to Humor with other fallacies (notably Amphiboly) that tend to be funny. The fallacy of Appeal to Humor uses humor to persuade. The speaker is aware of the joke. Some other fallacies are funny because we see through them. In those cases, the speaker is not aware that he is the butt of a joke. | ||
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| Examples: | ||
| "I notice that everyone in favor of abortion has already been born." | ||
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--Ronald Reagan |
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| "Keep Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld in office! After all, why change horsemen in mid-apocalypse?" | ||
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| Discussion: | ||
| Any stand-up comic will tell you that the secret to humor
is: tell the truth. A good comic tells us things about ourselves that
we normally wouldn't want to hear since they are too embarrassing or
sensitive. But by getting us to laugh at the truth about ourselves, we learn
to recognize our own foibles, and we learn to forgive the foibles of others.
Humor is the ultimate defense mechanism. We laugh at human foibles because
this allows us to live with them. Laughter is a natural and healthy way to
respond when we recognize that someone has offered us a bravely-spoken, but
possibly uncomfortable, truth.
Of course we laugh for other reasons as well. The fallacy of Appeal to Humor exploits our natural response to bravely-spoken truth. The fallacy presumes that any view that can be expressed in a way that elicits laughter must be true. However, we actually laugh for many reasons, only one of which is the recognition of the truth of the sentiment expressed. We may also laugh at a slogan because it is cleverly worded. We may laugh only because everyone around us is laughing. We laugh at slap-stick humor. An argument mimics our response to bravely-spoken truth when it gets us to laugh for a reason that is unrelated to our recognition of truth, yet seems to imply that laughter entails assent. |
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| Classification: A Fallacy of Irrelevance (a deductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the major premiss) in the Emotional Appeals family. | ||
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| Source: Richard Whateley describes this fallacy, but does not name it, in Elements of Logic, 1826. The term "appeal to humor" appears some time in the 20th century. I first became aware of it from Gerald Runkle, Good Thinking: An Introduction to Logic (1978). Please contact me if you can point me to a potentially useful clue regarding the original source of this fallacy. | ||
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