2009-11-18
Explanation
This comic shows a child watching a children's TV show featuring "Donny Dog," a cheerful cartoon dog on screen who declares: "The way to have joy is to share it with others!" Instead of accepting this wholesome message at face value, the child immediately spots a logical problem and launches into a rigorous critique: "So you can't have it till you share it, but you can't share it till you have it. Is Donny Dog saying life is joyless? Answer me, Miss Ferguson! Statements have logical conclusions!"
The caption reads: "Fortunately, logicians rarely have children." The humor comes from imagining a child who thinks like a formal logician, treating an innocent children's TV platitude as a proposition that must be logically consistent. The child identifies what appears to be a circular dependency paradox: if joy requires sharing, and sharing requires having joy first, then joy can never be initiated -- a classic bootstrap problem. The poor teacher, Miss Ferguson, is left to deal with this tiny philosopher who demands that feel-good slogans withstand rigorous logical scrutiny.
The votey panel shows the child continuing her tirade, shouting "Crying is not a proper retort!" -- implying that her relentless logical assault has reduced her teacher (or perhaps another child) to tears, and she considers this an insufficient counterargument. This reinforces the comic's portrait of what it would be like to raise a child with the temperament of an analytic philosopher.