Overlaps with and Illuminating Problems of Alternative Accounts of Humor

The seventh chapter discusses the theories we already have which explore the idea that humor gives us access to deep truth. It argues that they do not and cannot fully succeed, even in their more limited aim of showing that humor reveals what we can identify as true independently of the humor. It argues that the account of the relation of humor to truth which the book proposes, on the other hand, can successfully negotiate the problems that they cannot. The chapter makes a parallel argument about the existing theories of humor as giving us access to recognition of value.