So I said to the Gym instructor, "Can you teach me to do the splits?" He said, "How flexible are you?" I said,"I can't make Tuesdays."
Tommy Cooper
Jokes (like puns and double entendres) frequently exploit the dual meanings of words, in this case two senses of the word 'flexible', but do so in such a way that we have to hold both senses at once. It is the simultaneous appreciation of two conflicting ideas bound together by a single word that gives rise to the psychic discharge we experience as funny.
Jokes are a cardinal case of irrational conception: we conceive two conflicting, incompatible states of mind at once, without one canceling out the other. If this were to happen, or if the meanings were to occur sequentially, then the psychic disturbance would not happen. For example, if the joke was rendered as:
So I said to the Gym instructor, "Can you teach me to do the splits?"
He said, "How flexible are your limbs?"
I said,"My work schedule is not flexible and I can't make Tuesdays."
...little humour is evident, because the two meaning of flexible are not made to co-exist but to follow sequentially. Rationality (if not conversational convention) at this level is preserved.
Jokes are not funny when explained, probably because explanations neutralise the conflict by drawing the sense back into the realms of the rational.
Jokes seem to provide evidence that normal conscious states can accommodate distinct and irrational thoughts, and so resists the widely-held assumption that consciousness is unitary and rational.
See Koestler's 'bisocation' or 'double-minded' theory. He defined humour as: 'the perceiving of a situation or idea in two self-consistent but mutually incompatible frames of reference or associative contexts."
"D'you know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.'"
Tommy Cooper
