“He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.” ― Bertolt Brecht There are many ways to refute a theory. Refutation by joke is the greatest of all. “Two behaviourists have just made love. One asks the other: ‘I know you liked it. Did I like it?’” The starting point of this short essay is another attempted refutation-by-joke. It concerns valence. What? Very simply, to say that an experience has valence is to say that it feels pleasant/good or unpleasant/bad. A number of experiences have...
