Abstract

Karl Pfeifer counters the thesis that laughter and pleasure are intimately connected with one another, and addresses the thesis of John Morreall (1982) that a pleasant psyohological shift is a causally necessary condition for laughter. A variety of examples suggesting that laughter does not have to have pleasure as its causal antecedent are presented. Imitative, nervous, hysterical, physiogenic, and acerbic laughter suggest that it is neither incoherent nor implausible to consider laughter as being caused by unpleasant or at least not pleasant psychological states, but also suggest that the phenomenon is actually quite pervasive. An alternative reading of Morreall’s thesis is attempted and also found wanting, although in the end some interesting possibilities for a certain subdomain of laughter are hinted at.