Papers by Paul Butterfield
The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination, 2017
No abstract available
![Research paper thumbnail of Humor Ethics [Penultimate Draft]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/107198361/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art, 2023
In this chapter I survey some of the primary debates regarding the ethics of humor in contemporar... more In this chapter I survey some of the primary debates regarding the ethics of humor in contemporary philosophy and related disciplines. I consider the question of whether jokes have morally assessable content at all, or whether, as some joke-tellers claim, humor is inherently morally neutral, by virtue of being non-serious. I go on to note two theories of humor - that of Ronald De Sousa, and that of Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks - that suggest that humor's moral component involves the attitudes of joke-tellers being manifested quite directly in the content of a given joke. I also consider some more piecemeal approaches to the topic, which note morally relevant features of comic speech without providing a full account of the rights and wrongs of humor. These approaches concede that it is impossible to always know the intentions of a joke-teller, but appeal to contextual clues to indicate the likelihood of a joke being morally flawed. A related question concerns whether, if an instance of humor is morally compromised, it is therefore less funny. I detail the case for a positive answer to this question, which involves the idea that moral flaws can be off-putting because they put audiences in a mood not conducive to comic amusement. The chapter ends with a consideration of comic immoralism: the view that, in fact, moral flaws make a positive contribution to humorousness. I here consider the work of Aaron Smuts, who takes care to observe that proving comic immoralism true would require quite remarkable evidence.
Hypatia, 2023
The concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice-a type of hermeneutical injustice that disadvantag... more The concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice-a type of hermeneutical injustice that disadvantages members of marginalized groups in the arena of humor-sharing-is posited and explored. This paper first explains the concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice: that agents who are hermeneutically marginalized are less able to successfully participate in the sharing of humor. It then suggests that, to prove the existence of such an injustice, two things need to be shown: firstly, that hermeneutically marginalized groups do suffer some disadvantage in how well their attempts at humor are received; and, secondly, that this disadvantage amounts to a significant harm.
The Journal of Value Inquiry
![Research paper thumbnail of Focusing on the Gap: A Better Approach to the Ethics of Humor [Penultimate Draft]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/65525628/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Journal of Value Inquiry, 2020
This paper proposes a new approach to questions regarding the morality of humor. Many of the clai... more This paper proposes a new approach to questions regarding the morality of humor. Many of the claims made by philosophers about humor ethics are generalizable to the ethics of speech, more broadly. Accordingly, philosophical literature has failed to address what is genuinely interesting about the morality of humorous speech: namely, that the moral value of an instance of humor is often different from the moral value of an equivalent piece of non-humorous speech. Humor ethicists would make a more valuable contribution if they were to focus on explaining the moral idiosyncrasies of humor, as compared with non-humorous speech.
The second half of this paper focuses on one way in which the morality of humor differs from the morality of non-joking speech: the fact that one's social identity seems to be more morally relevant in cases of humorous speech. The paper argues for the existence of this discrepancy, and explains it in terms of a speaker's social identity being a useful contextual clue about her probable intentions. Since joking speech typically leaves more room for multiple plausible interpretations of a speaker's intentions, these contextual clues do more work for us in cases of humor-sharing than in cases of sincere speech.
Missing Shade of Blue, Jun 18, 2015
This essay contends that a commitment to neutrality cannot be the defining feature of the liberal... more This essay contends that a commitment to neutrality cannot be the defining feature of the liberal state. It will consider some desiderata for a definition of the liberal state, and conclude that neutrality, under any common definition, will fail to fulfil these criteria. In doing so, it will agree with the arguments of Alan Patten in 'Liberal Neutrality: A Reinterpretation and Defence' about the implausibility of existing attempts to define liberalism via neutrality, but ultimately conclude that his own interpretation of neutrality cannot be understood to define the liberal state, either.
Journal of Practical Ethics, Jan 15, 2015
Book Reviews by Paul Butterfield
Published in Dialectica, December 2016.
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Papers by Paul Butterfield
The second half of this paper focuses on one way in which the morality of humor differs from the morality of non-joking speech: the fact that one's social identity seems to be more morally relevant in cases of humorous speech. The paper argues for the existence of this discrepancy, and explains it in terms of a speaker's social identity being a useful contextual clue about her probable intentions. Since joking speech typically leaves more room for multiple plausible interpretations of a speaker's intentions, these contextual clues do more work for us in cases of humor-sharing than in cases of sincere speech.
Book Reviews by Paul Butterfield
The second half of this paper focuses on one way in which the morality of humor differs from the morality of non-joking speech: the fact that one's social identity seems to be more morally relevant in cases of humorous speech. The paper argues for the existence of this discrepancy, and explains it in terms of a speaker's social identity being a useful contextual clue about her probable intentions. Since joking speech typically leaves more room for multiple plausible interpretations of a speaker's intentions, these contextual clues do more work for us in cases of humor-sharing than in cases of sincere speech.