writer's block
Writer's Block: Do you think animals have a sense of humor?
How would you know? Sense of humor is the sort of thing we can't even understand in humans. Whenever some scholar tries to figure out What Makes Things Funny, the theories he produces seem to leave out the essential quality of humor: that it's funny. It's as if humor stops being funny when you try to examine it, especially if the person doing the examining doesn't have a sense of humor.
At least with intelligence, we might not agree on what it is, but at least it doesn't slip through our fingers as soon as we try to examine it more closely.
How would you know? Sense of humor is the sort of thing we can't even understand in humans. Whenever some scholar tries to figure out What Makes Things Funny, the theories he produces seem to leave out the essential quality of humor: that it's funny. It's as if humor stops being funny when you try to examine it, especially if the person doing the examining doesn't have a sense of humor.
At least with intelligence, we might not agree on what it is, but at least it doesn't slip through our fingers as soon as we try to examine it more closely.