Note 41

To identify an object in a graph, we define the dimensions of the object, then we define the coordinate system used, then we identify the object along the coordinates of the system.

Similarly, in the use of language, we have to define the sources of all possible meaningful utterances, then to define the language game used, and then to identify the contextual application through referring to a specific situation.

There is no given that these steps can be explained by a single theory.

These steps may or may not be sequential, or one of narrowing, and may feed into each other. The same act might require the use of several steps.

But they are philosophically separable, in that they have to be explained differently, because they refer to different things.

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Meaning-making is refracted contextually, and the understanding of the steps are necessarily refracted; but the concepts which are investigated must be defined in terms of its possibility (in relation to its negation), not its representation (in relation to conditions of its application). While the latter is necessary for the former to be meaningful, true philosophy is the former in the context of the latter.