roses-are-red
Explanation
The Joke
A woman excitedly presents a poem to a man (depicted as an older, bald, bespectacled figure). The poem reads: "Roses are red / Violets are blue / But qualia don''t exist / And neither do you." The caption below reads: "Another night alone for Daniel Dennett."
The Humor
The comic plays on the well-known "Roses are red, violets are blue" love poem format, but subverts it with a deeply nihilistic philosophical message. The poem references the philosophical concept of qualia -- the subjective, conscious experiences of sensations (like the redness of red or the painfulness of pain). Philosopher Daniel Dennett was famously skeptical of qualia, arguing that they don''t exist as traditionally conceived. The joke extends this denial to the person themselves ("and neither do you"), implying that Dennett''s philosophical views are so reductive and eliminativist that they make for terrible romantic poetry. The punchline caption -- "Another night alone for Daniel Dennett" -- suggests that denying the existence of subjective experience is not exactly an attractive quality in a romantic partner.
References
Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University, known for his work on consciousness, free will, and the philosophy of mind. He was one of the most prominent critics of the concept of qualia, arguing in works like "Consciousness Explained" (1991) and "Quining Qualia" (1988) that the traditional notion of qualia is confused and should be eliminated from scientific and philosophical discourse.