Again, this should (will I am thinking more and more) be a separate thread about Grammar, and intention, action, etc., but I do see some profit here (with this thread) in pointing some things out.

Yes, I can know what you are going to do; "look he is going to ask her out!"
— Antony Nickles

"...you can’t know he asks until he actually does." — Mww

Just to point out, this isn't predicting the future (especially not ensuring it). It is "going to do", not, know that he actually does it. And, of course, importantly, we can be wrong (or, as you say, something can intervene), but that only proves the possibility that we can. Witt is pointing out that possibility, in comparison to the Interlocutor's refusal to admit that we can "know" the other (even knowing their secrets) without "knowing" what is internal in the other. Importantly, these are two senses of knowledge within its Grammar (possibilities): to know (to guess with evidence, experience of the person, etc.) as opposed to knowledge as certain, prediction, infallibility, etc.

.'Meaning' is like the imagined 'hidden' inner process. A concept's grammar is its possibilities of sense--not a fixed 'meaning' like a definition either. "It's a blue day."
— Antony Nickles

It is because concepts do have specific meanings... which obtains a meaningful statement coincidental to speaker and listener. * * * understanding is a logical procedure in which the objects must align with the subject necessarily in order for there to be understanding in the first place. — Mww

We're almost there, but I put 'meaning' in quotes as connected to the hidden, inner process, because it is the (confused) picture Witt is trying to figure out why we want to insist on. Part of that picture is the idea that "concepts do have specific meanings." The PI starts with the idea that there is more (in his term, ordinary) rationality in the world/our language, than fixed, certain, specific; ALL the different ways each concept makes sense (the possible, available--even the unforeseeable): see two types of 'know' above (also, we can 'know' our phone #, which is the sense of knowledge (in its Grammar) that "we can remember it"). Meaning is not a noun, in this sense, not an adjective (meaningful statement), because meaning usually comes up afterwards (though we occasionally are trying to mean a specific sense, e.g., writing a speech; taking into consideration in advance an obvious possibility of it being taken in a different sense in a given context, etc.) We usually just say things and it works out fine (as you say). The point is nothing is fixed at all ahead of time (the 'object' and 'subject' do not align--the people do); we are endlessly responsible to each other to clarify, re-phrase, apologize, etc. (although we can give up). This frailty is not determined or resolvable by philosophy, logic, Forms of Life, our thought, 'meaning, intention, rules, science, etc. It is the open-ended process of communication.

Witt does say its amazing that we can communicate at all.
— Antony Nickles

...I can see, however, that Witt’s detractors might say exactly that, considering they might think Witt made common language use FUBAR because of his very own philosophical investigations. By the way.....did Witt have any peers playing the role of serious detractor? — Mww

All the positivists turned against him; Russell, Godel, the "Vienna Circle"; I would put A.J. Ayer in that boat (who J.L. Austin eviscerates: He and Witt share in responding to the 'descriptive fallacy'--the idea that everything said is a (true/false) statement; that everything is word--world, meaning--understanding; Austin showing there are other "truth-values", e.g., felicity to the Grammar of a concept, in Witt terms. But Austin is just a destroyer (thinking that refuting the skeptic is all we need); Witt is looking for why we want that in the first place (leaving the door open for the skeptic, putting us at the end of the failure of knowledge).)

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

I will argue that it is essential to put the above sentence in the textual context in which it was written to see its USE here by Witt--(...) that it is used in its sense as an uncontested FACT (not to be refuted or interpreted, nor an open question, nor a thesis, etc.)
— Antony Nickles

I can grant the sentence is being used as an uncontested fact, but if it is not be contested, refuted or interpreted asks the question....why did he say it? Apparently Witt is allowing himself to do something with it, even if only to demonstrate something else, which seems to require some sort of correspondence with an uncontested fact. Doesn’t the fact need to be interpreted in order to determine its correspondence? — Mww

As I said in my first post: he is using it as a fact in comparison to the choice (the conviction) in the sentence before, to show that we are in a position to the other (beyond knowledge) in response to their pain. It is not that we CAN NOT know/understand the other ( as with the lion, see ** below) we decide (cave to our desire) that without knowledge (in its sense of certainty, independent from us, etc.) we can not know the other--we have no (further) obligation to respond to their pain.

**Though, as I have said, you can certainly debate the fact if you want, or discuss it in its other possibilities; just trying to get people to see that its use here by Witt is as an uncontested fact, again, for comparison. Maybe it helps to say that: it can be both of these things, along with others. Just because it can be used in various ways, or that it "makes sense"--as in: you know the words and how they go together, say, independent of any context--doesn't mean that it can't be/isn't used in a particular sense--here, as an uncontested fact; it is the context (here, textually) in which its sense is seen.

SO what counts as language use? my suggestion, from the previous thread already mentioned, is that it contain names, groups of things and connectives; that is, first order predicate logic. And determining this of course involves translation. — Banno

Sounds reasonable. Maybe the fact that we haven't succeeded in translating dolphin-talk is reason to be skeptical that they are using language.

Humans have been able to successfully learn languages upon encountering new language communities. Maybe our common biology makes that easier than with other animals.

Related topics and tangents tend to crop up in these discussions. I find the lion quote interesting, because we do have a shared world with other animals, but we also have some difficulty in understanding them.

When a philosopher makes such a claim, I would think bringing up anthropology, linguistics and zoology would be appropriate. Reading over your OP, I see you were making a connection to ethics vis Witt's language use and pain. And that he wasn't really talking about lions, but was exploring what we understand of the other? I don't entirely follow.

I confess to sometimes glancing at a thread I haven't read from the beginning and wanting to respond to a particular post someone makes.

I'll leave you to it; only to say: my whole point is that Witt is not here "making a claim". That is not why this sentence is here. It is used in a different sense in the context of this text. Of course you can take it that way (it is a possibility of those words alone) as it is possible to drop in on one comment of a post.

Clarification: since Witt's focus on "use" seems to be a stumbling block, I wanted to point out that it is not the idea that someone makes a decision or some conscious casual force for a sentence to be used one way and not another (even in a very specific way); the same confusion that every word/action is 'intended'. In literary criticism this is the confusion of asking what the author themselves 'meant'. The context tells you the use, it allows for the determination of it. "Every word has a different character in a different context." PI, p. 181. The idea of a sentence or a word in isolation is only a thing in philosophy--stemming from the desire to tether it to something determinate, certain, universal.

Doesn’t the fact need to be interpreted in order to determine its correspondence?
— Mww

As I said in my first post: he is using it as a fact in comparison to the choice (the conviction) — Antony Nickles

The more times I read all this stuff, the closer I get to what you’re trying to say. So, yeah, the juxtaposition isn’t of the concepts in each sentence, it is the juxtaposition of the sentences to each other. My fault, for getting stuck in the minutia, in that I reject the arguments of both sentences outright, which makes it very hard to reconcile them into any sort of comparative relatedness.

You say the lion sentence is to be taken as a fact demonstrating an impossibility. It is only to be taken as a fact because its author so stipulates, but the sentence does not demonstrate an impossibility. It can’t, because the whole thing is predicated on contingencies. Thus, in order to understand the author’s overall intent, I am forced to disregard that the entire thesis begins with a logical error.

Fine, he wants me to accept the sentence as fact, ok, I do that. Then comes the other half of the dichotomy, concerning a moral circumstance. The conviction that the feelings some dude in pain are inaccessible to us when in truth “we CAN know”, but choose to be convinced we can’t, which casts us in a moral dilemma. Here is where requiring the lion sentence to be taken as fact is related, for we relieved of moral responsibility insofar as it doesn’t matter if lions could talk, we wouldn’t understand them anyway, so whatever their feelings, however they arrive at them, we couldn’t tell what they were anyway, so can’t be held liable for denying the accessibility of them. But on the other hand, because some dude and I are of similar enough “forms of life”, we should be non-transparent to each other (only he knows what he will do (is) wrong”), which in turn suggests stuff about him, including his feelings, shouldn’t be hidden from me (“only he knows what he intends is nonsense”).

And all that needs doing, in order for those two parenthetical assertions, and indeed how the two antecedent propositions, the one on fact and the other on conviction, can actually be the case......is to grant that concepts have different meanings. Or, the grammar of concepts are not etched in stone, so the reasoning using concepts is adaptable to circumstance.

I talk with you only to understand Witt, but even if or when I do, I’m not going to accept that OLP philosophy
—————-

Importantly, these are two senses of knowledge within its Grammar (possibilities): to know (to guess with evidence, experience of the person, etc.) as opposed to knowledge as certain, prediction, infallibility, etc. — Antony Nickles

This is yet another manifestation of the classical Platonic rendering of knowledge of, as opposed to knowledge that. Saying to know is to guess, is a flagrant disregard of logic, and has been since forever.

It is not that we CAN NOT know/understand the other.....we decide that without knowledge......we have no obligation to respond to their pain. — Antony Nickles

I might grant this is what Witt is telling us, then immediately reject it as not the case at all. It is never our knowledge of others that predicates our moral obligations. Even if I know everything there is to know about about you, I am not obligated to respond to your feelings because of it. I am obligated by HOW I feel about myself, not WHAT I feel about you, and certainly not either how or what you yourself feel. My knowledge, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t even enter into it, except it avails my immoral actions.
————-

The idea of a sentence or a word in isolation is only a thing in philosophy--stemming from the desire to tether it to something determinate, certain, universal. — Antony Nickles

Yes. Tethering to the irreducible, the apodeitically certain, is the whole modus operandi of human reason, and consequently, for possible mutual understanding because of it. Witt credits language use for understanding, or lack of it, but proper philosophy reduces language to its components, and those are the actual ground for understanding, and by association, the prevention of misunderstanding. Rather than worry about what a word means in a language, it is a better effort to realize how words originate of themselves, for then we find the meaning of a word is given BY its origin, and understanding henceforth becomes a matter of its relation, and its meaning becomes merely a matter of convention.

This relates directly to why I asked you about what Witt intends us to understand by the “picture”.

Anyway....5 minutes to football, so.....I’m outta here.

"I cannot know what is going on in him" is above all a picture. Witt, PI, p. 223.
— Antony Nickles

Can you help me out with [the] picture? Picture of what, picture of what kind, how do I know it as such, what am I enabled to do with it, what am I enabled to do because of it......and whatever else may apply as far as this topic is concerned. — Mww

This is a legit question for this post, as I skip over the picture to just make a case that the same desire (for the picture) comes from the entire human condition (our separateness). Maybe the best sense of the picture is: a model of sorts; the positivist model of meaning that Witt toyed with in the Tractates (that he is now diagnosing in the PI--"why did I/we want to think about it that way?"). The picture is: meaning, thought, any inner processes (how some use Forms of Life), corresponds to the world. We know one (world) through the other (word/meaning)--correlation.

" [From the Interlocutor:] 'A name signifies only what is an element of reality. What can not be destroyed; what remains the same in all moments.'... This was the very expression of a quite particular image: of a particular picture we[**] want to use." #59 **"We" being what philosophy has wanted in the past--certainty (not"destroy[-able]"), fixed ("the same"), universality ("in all moments")]

If we can't know one (the Other's mind) we can't know the Other (this is the denial). It is the view of (a picture for) meaning as statements that refer to objects; that true/false is the measure of meaning.

" 'The mind seems able to give a word a meaning'... But this is not something that seems to be so; it is a picture." p. 184

It is here important to point out that this is what Witt is trying to show as the shortcomings of philosophical 'knowledge'--its attempt to solve the skeptical doubt of other minds ("I can't know--be certain--what is going on in them"; "I can't but know what is going on in me"--or "I absolutely can not know what is going on with them"---because it doesn't meet the standard of the positivist's "knowledge".

" 'Either he has this experience, or not' --what primarily occurs to us is a picture which by itself seems to make the sense of the expressions unmistakable..." #352

Witt points to the lion; as if, in THIS case, yes, we CAN NOT--but, with the Other, we are ABLE TO, however, we would rather rely on the Picture: where knowledge (of the inner, of agreed meaning, etc.) stands in our place, excusing us from any relation to the Other--to their expressions which ask to be answered, perhaps; "mistake"-nly (see quote above); unjustly, selfishly, by closing our eyes shut, etc.

You say the lion sentence is to be taken as a fact demonstrating an impossibility. It is only to be taken as a fact because its author so stipulates, but the sentence does not demonstrate an impossibility. — Mww

No, he/the sentence does not demonstrate it, but, Yes!! Witt is asking you to take/accept/imagine it as a fact. Whew.

The conviction that the feelings some dude in pain are inaccessible to us when in truth “we CAN know”, but choose to be convinced we can’t.... — Mww

Again, got it. You go on to assume Witt is using the comparison as a moral equivalency (between our position to the lion and the Other), but that is going one step too far--what you say above is the stopping point with the lion. Also, we are not "choosing" to be "convinced". Picturing knowledge this way expresses our conviction with regard to the Other: I want to know him only by knowing his inner (thought processes, meaning, intention, etc.) or outer (traditions, form of life, etc.), and, since those are not accessible/sufficient, we conclude we cannot "know" the Other (as the Interlocutor says), when we can. But we do have a relationship to the Other; it's just that it's more than knowledge ("know" in a different sense--aaaand I just lost @Mmw because this is Witt as Ordinary Language Philosopher.) Our relationship to the Other (and meaning, Form of Life, etc.) is not predetermined, certain, universal, predictable, not partial, unconditional, free from doubt, etc. There is a gap between us and Them that only we can fill (if necessary)--we know the Other in the sense we acknowledge them, their expressions as meaningful, or reject them.

we [are] relieved of moral responsibility... so can’t be held liable for denying the accessibility of them [the Other's feelings] — Mww

This (which is taken out of the context of @Mmw's discussion, but it) is, in a nutshell, what we want as humans, and which creates the Picture of philosophical (positivist) knowledge. We no longer have to be responsive to the accessible expressions of the Other; no longer have to span the distance of our separateness.

And all that needs doing..... is to grant that... the grammar of concepts are not etched in stone, so the reasoning using concepts is adaptable to circumstance. — Mww

And here all we need to tweak is that "reasoning" (or, us), do not "use" concepts. Concepts have different "uses" as in different ways in which they make sense, say: "to know", as I have discussed elsewhere, a phone number, the theme of a poem, a person's intent, when a star will appear on the other side of the moon, etc. But these senses are not adaptable "to" a circumstance, nor, again, adaptable by reason (or by a person); the "use"--the sense(s) a concept has--is part of the context at the time (as it were, to be determined, if necessary). Just because they are not fixed (do not ensure anything), does not make them adaptable, nor irrational--just that what counts as reasonable for each concept, in context, may be different.

It is not that we CAN NOT know/understand the other.....we decide that without knowledge......we have no obligation to respond to their pain.
— Antony Nickles

It is never our knowledge of others that predicates our moral obligations. — Mww

The issue is the problem the Other creates in being unknown (unknowable (with certainty) the interlocutor will claim, since we cannot know what is going on with their experience--internally; or by some shared external something)). Now this response in a sense moves past the other--the claim on us of them, not others generally, but this person, in front of us, in a present moral situation, say, writhing in pain--past that to find our obligations spelled out in morality, our moral knowledge. As if Kant were not just trying to remove our feelings or instinct from our moral action, but remove what we can't be certain of (beforehand) entirely--including the Other.

The idea of a sentence or a word in isolation is only a thing in philosophy--stemming from the desire to tether it to something determinate, certain, universal.
— Antony Nickles

Yes. Tethering to the irreducible, the apodeitically certain, is the whole modus operandi of human reason, and consequently, for possible mutual understanding because of it. — Mww

Here I should say that there is nothing wrong (false) with the Picture of knowledge that the Interlocutor wants, and there is nothing impossible about it--we can, of course, 'know' the Other, say, scientifically (for what good it does). And the mode of (philosophical, rational, logical) "human reason" is not nonsense, or incorrect. However, the desire to "tether to the irreducible" is the same desire for certainty of the Other that Witt is pointing out comes to an end (categorically) in the human condition. We are separate; there is no understanding that is ensured to us mutually. If there is a miscommunication, or a disagreement, or a refusal to recognize the Other--their cares, their sensibilities, their history--there is nothing that "knowledge" or "reason" will do apart from our willingness to refuse to give up on the process of understanding. The "possibility" for that understanding has a breaking point, an ending moment. But, again, most of the time misunderstanding does not happen--there is no need for concern over the Other; no need to ask about intention or what they mean, but that is not the situation philosophers care about. The desire is to never come to that moment by treating every communication and the process of understanding as the same; setting the bar for certainty and predictability, and solving for that problem. It is to put the cart before the horse, and the philosophical criteria from that desire for certainty leave us blind to the Other, unable to capture all the various ways we save understanding--excuses, apologies, clarifications, acknowledgements, concessions; i.e., reasons, to allow for the possibility for understanding.

Witt credits language use for understanding, or lack of it, but proper philosophy reduces language to its components, and those are the actual ground for understanding, and by association, the prevention of misunderstanding. Rather than worry about what a word means in a language, it is a better effort to realize how words originate of themselves, for then we find the meaning of a word is given BY its origin, and understanding henceforth becomes a matter of its relation, and its meaning becomes merely a matter of convention. — Mww

And now we've come full circle to the "ground for understanding" again; the search for how meaning is given to a word--here maybe by its origin, relation, convention; "language as components"--this is the search Witt is showing forces a picture on us, a certain pre-determined theoretical framework based on our fears and desires. Saying Witt "credits language use for understanding" is to impose that picture onto Witt--attribute to him the desire which he is attempting to reveal. It is important to note that when Witt is saying, paraphrased: "Look at the Use!" (#340), that is not to say that "use is meaning" (use as opposed to... ) but: Look! See how language functions many ways beyond this prejudice for certainty, universality (beyond the person); to see that language is not just word-object or true/false statements; to recognize that there are myriad uses ("senses" he will say, grammars) of a concept--they have numerous possibilities in which they can be meaningful (even projections for new importance, into new contexts), and have different criteria, judged different ways, in each sense, in each categorical context--knowledge as fact, knowledge as skill/familiarity, knowledge as acknowledgement--its many ordinary formations (imagine, even "certainty" in different ways in different places). As if Plato pushed past Socrates' accomplishment in his (Plato's) desire for a standard of knowledge which led to the picture of the forms. Socrates was an ordinary language philosopher first in asking "what do when say: when...", say, we ask about justice. One ordinary answer is: might makes right--that is actually a part of the world of justice; it's a legitimate, rational answer. Maybe not the best justice, but how can we say that the idea that "what is good for the stronger is good for the country" is not part of the concept/possibility/conversation of justice? It's the basis for trickle-down economics. Socrates (and definitely Plato) do aspire to a (more just) answer, but along the way we are investigating our (normally unnoticed, unexamined) concepts--this is the benefit of ordinary philosophy. Plato went too far in imagining a hidden world to fit his desired conditions rather than see the criteria existing in the world. Why ask the question if you know the answer?

But Witt's point is that the grounding we want is a wish; a decision before we look (start our investigation)--starting with a demand for a certain standard. We understand each other most of the time because of the ordinary everything; all the training, all the watching, all the mistakes, etc. Our language is weaved into our lives and world, not in any specific way, but in all the complex, subtle, crass, general, lazy, vague, precise, poetic ways in which we live and judge and how we disagree and know and forget and apologize. Witt is trying to expand our vision to see all the different ways language works in various activities; even just at a particular time/place (the context of the event, the people there, the expectations, the accompanying histories, the feelings). All language can not be reduced to one explanation, a theory.

The point he is making at this moment in the PI is that, despite our wish to interact with the Other based on knowledge that is certain, and with understanding grounded in something that would prevent misunderstanding, our knowledge of the Other comes to an end, and we are left with: not an empirical problem to solve, but a moral situation in which we are responsible for our effort (or lack of) to understand the Other--together, through questions, rebuke, ultimatums, education, exasperation, breakthrough, learning what matters to each other, clearing up hyperbole, generalized terms, different senses, etc. You might say words have meaning; I would say that more important than ensuring that process is to see that words are meant.

The picture is: meaning, thought, any inner processes (how some use Forms of Life), corresponds to the world. We know one (world) through the other (word/meaning)--correlation. — Antony Nickles

Agreed, in principle. The picture....the mental image as I use “picture”......corresponds to the world, such image I would call intuition, but the remainder of the inner process must ensue before there is knowledge. Different metaphysics, similar principles.
————-

it's just we have a relationship to the Other that is more than knowledge ("know" in a different sense--aaaand I just lost Mmw because this is Witt as Ordinary Language Philosopher.) — Antony Nickles

Kindasorta lost me, I guess, insofar as I attribute no philosophical authority to ordinary language. But I’m still interested in this “know” in a different sense, from its point of view.
——————-

reasoning using concepts is adaptable to circumstance.
— Mww

......Concepts have different "uses" as in different ways in which they make sense.....

Doesn’t that say the same thing?

........the sense a concept has, is part of the context at the time (as it were, to be determined, if necessary).......

Doesn’t that just say more of the same thing?

..........just that what counts as reasonable for each concept, in context, may be different. — Antony Nickles

And that too?

A concept is, after all, nothing but a representation of something. A representation, in and of itself, has no meaning. It only attains to a meaning upon being conjoined with something else, and the only way to conjoin, is to reason. To think. It is here that it becomes more rational to insist concepts are fixed, concepts do ensure something, otherwise we couldn’t ever claim any knowledge whatsoever. If we are not certain of a specific representation of a specific quantity, conceived, say, as the number 1, we wouldn’t have any ground at all for what stands as the absolute truth of mathematical expressions. But the number 1 is completely meaningless by itself, and actually wouldn’t even have been conceived at all, if it weren’t for a need only it could satisfy.

And as an added bonus, we see what counts as reasonable for each concept may indeed be different, insofar as “green” will never be a reasonable substitute for the number 1.

Also continued......

The picture is: meaning, thought, any inner processes (how some use Forms of Life), corresponds to the world. We know one (world) through the other (word/meaning)--correlation.
— Antony Nickles

Agreed, in principle. The picture....the mental image as I use “picture”......corresponds to the world, such image I would call intuition, but the remainder of the inner process must ensue before there is knowledge. Different metaphysics, similar principles. — Mww

This is a description of "the picture", not as a theory proposed by Witt (or me). It is also not referring to 'pictures' as, say, mental images; it is the theoretical framework forced on us by the desire for certainty (predictability, universality, etc.). The metaphysics (or Forms of Life, or Use, or any other postulation to solve the problem (separation) of the Other) is created by the need for something other than the stopping point at which we become responsible to each other. This is to veer into territory better suited for another post, but one of Witt's points is there is no space between our pain and its expression to allow our own "knowledge" of it. We express our pain (or hide it); we don't "know" it. Similarly, usually there is no space between the world and our language; no (metaphysical) "reality" to which our words correspond. I say usually because our doubt--our confusion, our fear, our lack of control of the Other--along with other (moral, aesthetic, etc.) problems, create the feeling of space--and thus the need for some connection--between the word and the world. But the Other is separate; we can't agree or convince each other; things fall apart, irreparably sometimes; our standards run afoul. The picture allows a vision of the world where these things are manageable, avoidable, or solved--by knowledge, logic, argument, etc.

it's just we have a relationship to the Other that is more than knowledge ("know" in a different sense--aaaand I just lost Mmw because this is Witt as Ordinary Language Philosopher.)
— Antony Nickles

Kindasorta lost me, I guess, insofar as I attribute no philosophical authority to ordinary language. But I’m still interested in this “know” in a different sense, from its point of view. — Mww

I'll take the second part first. I have discussed elsewhere that Witt is pointing out that knowledge in this sense (our ability to be certain, say, about the Other), comes to an end sometimes. We are separate, and that comes out in ways that cannot be resolved by "knowledge"--either of the Other, or of our world or our language, say, to convince/logically force the Other. As I added just above recently, language is not just word-object or true/false statements; there are myriad uses ("senses" Witt will say, grammars) of a concept--they have numerous possibilities in which they can be meaningful (even projections for new meaning into new contexts), and have different criteria, judged different ways, in each sense, in each categorical context--knowledge as fact, knowledge as skill/familiarity, knowledge as acknowledgement--its many ordinary formations.

Now when you say you attribute no philosophical authority to ordinary language, that is understandable. That is a view of Witt and other ordinary language philosophers shared by much of philosophy. This definitely would be another post, but the observations of OLP are not made to be assessed as statements (about the world, etc.). OLP makes no claim to defend ordinary usage ("common sense") either (say, against "philosophy"). The descriptions also have no authority other than the extent to which someone else sees what I see--the statements about: what we say when, e.g., when we say we "know something", etc.--are philosophical evidence--but they are not facts. Though neither are they merely beliefs. There may be disputes, e.g., over whether it is really the case/sense, whether it applies in this particular context, and whether, even if we accept it, there is any philosophical implication to the issues that concern us, say: does the sense of knowledge as acknowledgement really impact the Problem of Other Minds? OLP is not to compete with traditional analytical philosophy (say, on its terms), but to revolutionize it (from within) entirely.

[concepts have different meanings. Or, the grammar of concepts are not etched in stone, so the] reasoning using concepts is adaptable to circumstance.
— Mww

......Concepts have different "uses" as in different ways in which they make sense.....

Doesn’t that say the same thing? — Mww

In the paragraph above in which this is included is the implication that there is a competition here between knowledge and belief--a way for certainty (stone), and a failing of "difference"/"adaptability". Witt is trying to see past those all-or-nothing pictures by showing that our concepts have varying senses (say, than this dichotomy). But the criteria for you "knowing" your brother's character compared to you "knowing" Newton's laws are not different "meanings". We don't (reason doesn't) "use" or "adapt" concepts. Just because they are not certain, universal, predictable, etc., or that because they are varied, sometimes generalizable, projectable, subject to circumstance, etc., does not make the different senses (and each of their criteria) of our concepts, flimsy, personal, or without implications. You'd have to explain why you'd say you "know" the sun will come up (not that there are no reasons, I guess), not because it's common sense, but because that does not fit the criteria for the concept of "knowledge"--(there'd have to be a reason to doubt it would come up)--My examples of apologies, etc. are better. You CAN say whatever you want ("adapt concepts to circumstances"), but at a certain point you will be said not to be making an apology, no longer playing a "game"; you will be outside any category of a concept, or lying, evading, joking, insincere, avant garde, or maybe called insane (the goal here is not claiming normative force).

A concept is, after all, nothing but a representation of something. A representation, in and of itself, has no meaning. It only attains to a meaning upon being conjoined with something else, and the only way to conjoin, is to reason. To think. It is here that it becomes more rational to insist concepts are fixed, concepts do ensure something, otherwise we couldn’t ever claim any knowledge whatsoever. — Mww

Witt's view of concepts (the same term used by others but with a different framework around it), is that they are categorical (as I said, in sort of a Kantian sense), not representational. It is not "idea" and "reality" (or whatever). A concept is a class held in place (loosely) with criteria (say, for judgment, standards, identity, etc.). The "conjoining" of meaning with anything, by reason or agreement, etc., to "ensure" or "fix", say, our thoughts--the "insistence", the need of it--is the pull that forces a certain view of how meaning must work; the picture, the theoretical threshold. The fear of the fallibility of us, of our concepts, leads to calamatizing "we couldn’t ever claim any knowledge whatsoever."

If we are not certain of a specific representation of a specific quantity, conceived, say, as the number 1, we wouldn’t have any ground at all for what stands as the absolute truth of mathematical expressions. — Mww

Here try to see that "the absolute truth of mathematical expressions" being "grounded" in "certainty" is the grammar of mathematical expressions; it is the way they work, the criteria for being what they are. Is it not easier now to see that there are other expressions that have other criteria? different ways in which they work? Maybe they do not rely on certainty; there may even be no "ground". Our moral realm still has rationale, though it might fail; our aesthetic world still has knowledge, only perhaps not always agreement. Can we never make any claim whatsoever? i.e., is discussion impossible outside the conditions of grounded certainty?

we see what counts as reasonable for each concept may indeed be different — Mww

Seeing the variety of conceptual rationale is one of the main points of the PI. "Seeing what counts" for a concept--even for the different senses of a concept--is to see two things (at least) about the grammar of a concept: the criteria ("what counts") are the structure and limits of that concept. If you stray from the grammar of a concept, the criteria resolve the identity of an action under that concept--e.g., what it can not be (or must fulfill) if it is to be "knowledge". But the criteria also elucidate what "counts"--as in, what 'matters'--under a concept; the human cares and needs reflected in our criteria. "Reasoning" is not internal; grammar is also the ways I which a concept can be meaningful, or at least usually (as humans can do whatever they want for whatever reasons they want), say, "What's your reasoning for doing it that way?"--"for more aerodynamics" or "less weight"; but maybe not: "I felt a moral obligation".

But the number 1 is completely meaningless by itself, and actually wouldn’t even have been conceived at all, if it weren’t for a need only it could satisfy. — Mww

And here we can see a need giving a concept the criteria for its grammar (one of which is the satisfaction of the need). Should we call this the concept of singularity/uniqueness? or of numerical primacy? or a series? All? Are there contexts where there could be confusion between which sense applies? (not here but maybe under the different senses of knowledge, good, should, etc.) We have different criteria for how these senses are used, e.g., different conditions, and different consequences for using them outside that criteria, say, the rigidity for inclusion under one sense or the other. These distinctions go on as far as the need to clarify, even beyond their limits (e.g., the "bad" as the "moral" as Nietschze might say).