Is There Humor in Jokes?

Laughter is a kind of social signal, and we do give off messages in a self aware manner to other people about what we find funny. The strongest moralalistic position would be that any joke that contained a taint of evil would not be funny at all. But there's a more sophisticated position, which has come to be known as ethecism. And it claims that jokes are unfunny to the degree that they are morally blemished,. To the degree that is an immoral dimension to the joke.