| This question <86|97> overall <88|90> Hans: <84|100>. |
| Question 150: Describe a real or imagined situation (not necessarily related to Marx's text) where someone says, “a pair of shoes is a pair of shoes,” or “a car is a car,” or “20 yards of linen are 20 yards of linen,” or “I am I” (compare footnote 19 below). Describe exactly what is meant by this phrase in the situation you choose. |
| [89] Hans: From tautology to contradiction. Jin [86] describes a situation in which her father said to her “a pair of shoes is a pair of shoes.” She explained that her father's utterance was not a tautological statement at all, but it had a specific meaning, and Jin knew exactly what this meaning was. |
| One of the things I want you to learn in this class is to recognize contradictions in real life. Here is the contradiction: Why did Jin's father say to Jin “a pair of shoes is a pair of shoes”? He didn't explain to her what he meant with it, the information content of what he actually said was exactly zero. Of course he meant something with it, and Jin knew what he meant, but why did he say it if Jin already knew it? Jin's dad also demonstrated that he knew that Jin knew it, because otherwise he would explained himself better. What gives? |
| This is a contradiction which forces us to go beneath the surface. On the surface, Jin's father is making a factual statement. But if we try to read it as a factual statement we realize that it does not make sense, as explained in the last paragraph. Therefore what is really going on? In the disguise of a factual statement, Jin's father is telling Jin what he would like her to do. And Jin knows this hidden message exactly too: he wants her to buy textbooks instead of shoes. |
| One can go even one step further and ask: why is Jin's father not telling Jin directly that she should buy textbooks instead of shoes? Because as a parent of an adult child, you don't want to tell the child what to do. On the one hand, children of that age will simply not do it if the parents tell them, and on the other, both parents and children know that the children have to make their own decisions. So I don't think Jin's father's concern is the bills he has to pay for the shoes. Jin's father's concern is that Jin is not making the right decisions for her life and miss out on an opportunity by not buying textbooks. |
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