Against the Moralistic Fallacy: A Modest Defense of a Modest Sentimentalism about Humor

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (1):83-94 (2012)
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Abstract

In a series of important papers, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson argue that all extant neo-sentimentalists are guilty of a conflation error that they call the moralistic fallacy. One commits the moralistic fallacy when one infers from the fact that it would be morally wrong to experience an affective attitude—e.g., it would be wrong to be amused—that the attitude does not fit its object—e.g., that it is not funny. Such inferences, they argue, conflate the appropriateness conditions of attitudinal responses with the fittingness conditions of the associated evaluative properties. Further, they argue that moral considerations are irrelevant for determining if amusement fits its object. We agree that a strong moralizing of humor is wrongheaded and that jokes can be quite funny even in cases where we have a compelling moral reason to not be amused. However, we argue that pace D’Arms and Jacobson moral considerations can be relevant for property ascription. On our view, in order for a joke to be funny, a properly sensitive agent must take herself to have a contributory reason to be amused, and in some cases that she lacks such a reason is best explained by appeal to moral considerations. We use this constraint as the basis of what we call our modest proposal for a modest sentimentalism

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Author Profiles

Stephanie Patridge
Otterbein College
Andrew Jordan
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Citations of this work

Amusement and beyond.Steffen Steinert - 2017 - Dissertation, Lmu München
Is this a joke? The philosophy of humour.Alan Roberts - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Sussex

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References found in this work

Ethics without principles.Jonathan Dancy - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Moralistic Fallacy.Daniel Jacobson - 2000 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1):65-90.
The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions.Justin D'Arms & Daniel Jacobson - 2000 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 61 (1):65-90.
Sentiment and value.Justin D’Arms & Daniel Jacobson - 2000 - Ethics 110 (4):722-748.

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