I can just envision the logician running to his grid of truth values, drawing out an intricate tracery of implication among the various possible meanings or "construals" of the terms of the pun. And, if anything, the prime motive of the technology of reason, if there is such a thing, is to eliminate ambiguity, not to celebrate it. Even if they do manage to nail down all the possible senses of each term and succeed in delineating all the possible avenues of true inference, they miss the whole point. It's funny. But geeks don't laugh. Computers don't get the joke. You see, the most ambiguous term in any language is "is" or "=". But if there is to be any language at all it is by playing with that ambiguity that we engage in its generation, and it is by eliminating that ambiguity that we pretend to become "philosophers". Unless, that is, we want to do "philosophy" as it is done at The Socrates Cafe, or better, in the Plato dialog Euthydemus.
But what if a proposition is a pun? What if it is not at all clear which, subject or predicate, is the organizing term? If unresolved, inference derived goes quickly wonky, and it takes a joker to unravel the mess, or even to see it is a mess. The logician's lack of humor is lethal to his mission of nailing down the terms of his formalism.
When Anne Bancroft died, Bette Davis was asked to comment. "You're only supposed to speak good of the dead;" she said, "Anne Bancroft is dead. Good!"
Hume's sense of 'impression' probably referred to the 'tabula rasa' metaphor for memory and experience. But once we are faced with multiple meanings we are posed with the dilemma: if we ask which one is which, which meaning is meant, we have already committed to a humorless accounting. The problem, then, is to find a way to be more expansive without losing our powers of judgment. That's why there is humor. Humorless precision is calcified, humorless flexibility is madness. Neither is capable of using language well, or even  partaking in its generation. In other words, humor is a recognition of the difference between the generation of language and the mechanics of judgment in it.
 
 
 
 
 

My apologies, but:
`I've become fond of continual gay necrophilia.' said Algernon in dead earnest. 
 

In the National Lampoon's High School Yearbook the central pages of photographs of all the students contains several hundred Cartalk?-style credit pun names,  finishing with a young man yclept 'Theophilus Puneval'. 

I visit this blog first time and inspire by this good stuff work. Incredible post keeps up posting such great information. If you like to write essays then you can use cheap essay writing service  for a trust worthy service.

Puns are charming. Sometimes, engaging; sometimes, annoying; occasionally, more poignant than the thing(s) they poke fun at. I used to participate in punditry, but seldom do so now, preferring instead to conjure sayings that may somehow illustrate that truth is either more or less than fiction, but seldom as interesting. I have shared a few of these in comments on other phil-talk blog posts. Here is another for your perusal: Anticipation precedes disappointment. Think about all of the things you may have so-anxiously looked forward to having (or doing) the first time. You had probably heard all sorts of accounts of how wonderful; special; illuminating; life-changing; or earth-shaking these things were to be when first experienced. Then, the time came for your turn at the helm. And, tragically, it was just not all you had expected it to be. A lot like the lies your government tells you, proffered for your well fare, but more honestly(?) connected to "national security". Nothing is ever what it first seems. Nor is any of it quite as advertised.
Neuman

If the rules of evidence applied, Trump would not be able simply to deny intending to say what is the most reasonable sense in which to construe him, he would have to explicitly repudiate that sense and those who cheer him on in that sense. It is not frivolous that courts require that parties to a legal procedure be held to a high standard of discourse. The only reason politicians are not is because journalism derives a better profit potential from ambiguity and unresolvable factual claims. It gives them more to blather about and the condidates more reason to buy advertizing. But one thing should be clear: the most dangerous consequences come of supporting a candidate on the assumption he does not mean what he says.
Yes, puns profane the unfounded bias of the analytic school, and so help to reveal the fundamental fallacy of logic: you can't quantify the qualifier. The meaning of all terms in any language, including the gobbledegook used by logicians, emerge as the profaning the qualifier is of the quantifier. Words come to mean what they mean through a dialectical drama in which it becomes impossible to determine which, subject or predicate, is the engine of the meaning of the proposition. But logicians, nevertheless, proceed blissfully, or dogmatically, unaware of the fallacy of their conviction that the whole edifice of valid reasoning derives from and proceeds as that ability to enumerate which one is which.

The pictorial puns illustrated on your post page reminded me of something similar I saw, back in the 1980s. It was a small cartoon booklet, entitled Droodles. The subject matter was akin to the material depicted as introductory to your blog post, showing such laughable cartoons as a foggy picture with a pink-nostrilled something at its center. The captioned answer? "A pig, coming out of a fog bank". The entire book was replete with these clever, visual puzzles. Wish I still had it, because it was entertaining, for young and old alike: probably even qualifying as 'educational', on some cognitive level. Puns are, in one sense, 'metaphors with a sense-of-humor'. And, of course, metaphor is one of our inter- national treasures, whether it is the stuff of English language; 'las idomas' of Spanish or the sometimes-less-than-serious quips of Confucius(his own, or someone else' rendition of what he might have said, notwithstanding). Thanks for jogging loose a pleasant memory. Look Droodles up sometime, Professor, if you do not already know of it. Somehow, I suspect you do. Cordially, Neuman

I'm a puny fiend of Oscar Wilde

One: Be yourself, everyone else is taken
Two: My wife and I never disagree, she's just wrong sometimes
Three: Marriage is a state in which two people become one: but which one?