On Sep 3, 2:17 am, Baz hotmail.com> wrote:

Baz, thanks for the link. I enjoyed reading your informative and
provocative essay. Probably (and rightly) responses from this NG have
little significance for you but I want you to know that I enjoyed your
incisive approach to a subject that, previously, I had not considered
from the evolutionary aspect.

I congratulate you on ‘reducing’ the subject of ‘Humor’ into its parts
and zeroing in on that aspect that evinces the physical response of
laughter. In this NG (alt. philosophy) much time is wasted on
discussions of brain function that is not reflected in human behavior.
Laughter is a phenomenon so common in animal behavior, that it is
unlikely to be a “spandrel” of evolution but a significant mechanism
that advantaged the evolutionary development of modern humans (despite
the spontaneous generation of infinite possibilities).
I congratulate you on your endeavor to establish a case from the
bottom–up because this, as always in science, is the only way of
generating data that can be used by top–down investigators to generate
more complex theories.
You make a good case for your displacement theory of laughter and the
jokes in your text were invaluable in following your exposition of the
differences in how laughter is invoked. They are also enjoyable in
themselves and I have already told them (with the exception of one),to
my appreciative social group. The exceptional joke awaits a suitable
stag occasion J

Your measured and modest claims are to your credit and stand as an
exemplar of the methodology of science.
I quote from your summary-

“This paper has probably posed more questions than it has provided
answers, as during the investigation of laughter and humor the
accepted wisdom concerning the natures of language emotions and
pleasure has been brought into QUESTION (my caps)”.

Compare this with the certitude of claims by the mystics in this NG.
Zinnic