Can two people, sharing the ‘same’ context of use, still end up with slightly different sense of meaning of a word? — Joshs

Reading this from the perspective and terminology of Wittgenstein: There is a context, but it is not a fixed thing, nor "shared", nor the "same". The purpose of a context is an endless, if necessary, event of distinctions, if we need to understand in what sense a concept is/was used (by someone). Let's try to let go off equating/connecting "meaning" with words (language), and broaden the idea of a "word" to Witt's term "concept", so, "Can two people... end up with slightly different sense of a word [concept]?" Yes, misunderstandings happen all the time; see the different senses of just the expression "The sky is blue" above, or "knowledge": of a fact, of a skill, acknowledging the other, etc.

Does not a single individual, alone, in using the ‘same’ word over and over, end up slightly changing the sense of meaning of that word ever so slightly from day to day? — Joshs

No. The individual (feelings, intention, cause) does not change the senses of words. They may use a word (concept) in its different senses, but they are not "changing" anything about the workings of that concept. That's not to say there is not the possibility of the extension of a concept, particularly into a new context, that does change/add/diminish/invigorate/cheapen our concepts, but this is as much to change our lives/culture as our words, so not "immediate" nor "intimate" and without the idea of an "identically ‘shared’ discursive meaning" (though it can be said that an individual can change our lives/culture).

“The individual (feelings, intention, cause) does not change the senses of words. They may use a word (concept) in its different senses, but they are not "changing" anything about the workings of that concept.”

You know , of course, that the way a color appears to us changes in relation to many factors, such as the color of the background it appears against, the level of illumination, etc. Is there some veridical
color that these changes are
distortions of, or is it better tto recognize that perceptions in general appear against a bodily interactive field that is never identical from one point of time to the next? Are not perceptions forms of language themselves? If two people have slightly different perceptions of the ‘same’ color they are both looking at , is this a ‘misunderstanding’? Do we communicate with others despite such ‘misunderstandings’ or because of them? That is, perhaps the notion that there is such a thing as an unchanging word use is a derived abstraction, rather than the fundamental case. Husserl pointed out that objectivity is the result of intersubjective correlations. We convince ourselves that what is in fact only similar from one person to the next in our understanding of social conventions like words is identically shared between people.

I think what John Shotter said about science is true of word concepts.

“ although two scientists might not differ at all in
doing calculations, making predictions, and in pro-
viding explanations when working with scientific
formulae, differences could still occur between them
in the connections and relations they sense as exist-
ing within the phenomena of their inquiries. But
these would only show up, notes Hanson (1958) in
the different directions their new inquiries would
take, “in ‘frontier’ thinking – where the direction of
new inquiry has regularly to be redetermined”
(p.118).”

How should a psychotherapist proceed in understanding what their client means in their use of word concepts if not by attempting to discover the idiosyncratic ways in which such concepts are interrelated with a personal system
of meanings for that client?

Each of us lives in slightly different worlds, and we manage to communicate not by eliminating this fact but by accommodating to it. Most of the time the general nature of our social dealings masks these inter-individual differences in interpretation of word concepts. But when situations come up that expose these pre-existing differences , we are stunned to find that our neighbor voted for so and so, or ascribed to
such and such conspiracy theory. We then say they distorted , misread, misinterpreted the ‘true’ meaning of the concepts because we assumed that ...how did you put it?... “ they are not "changing" anything about the workings of that concept.”

Quoting John Shotter: "...different directions their new inquiries would take [would show up], “in ‘frontier’ thinking – where the direction of new inquiry has regularly to be redetermined” — Joshs

This extrapolation of the evolution of our scientific paradigms is somewhat analogous to the extension/adaptation/change that does happen with our concepts (Witt discusses it as "continuing a series"). But how this works with scientific theories is different than in the moral realm or with modern art or political discourse, etc. In science, we may put facts together under a different paradigm, but we do not have facts in the other instances (though we might wish to have the "fact" of the certainty of our own "experience", etc.), and we are not changing a paradigm or theory; our words and our lives are tied together, though we are not always able to work out our differences--understanding is not ensured.

is it better to recognize that perceptions in general appear against a bodily interactive field? — Joshs

But here we do have a "verification color"--the swatch in the paint store (not a metaphysical "color"). We do not "misunderstand" each other about a color, we disagree in particular, intelligible, resolvable ways. If we agree, they are the same color (we do not each have our own and simply agree that they are the same). These distinctions and pathways are part of how the concept of color works. But the generalization of color schema for the meaningfulness of everything is to run roughshod over all the different ways concepts work (there is no universal theory of "meaning"). Our identification and description of color is different than that for objects or headaches, etc. (Stanley Cavell, in "Knowing and Acknowledging" from Must We Mean What We Say does a good job of investigating the ways in which we talk about color, pain, etc. regarding knowledge of other minds.)

The implication of a private "perception" (thought, intention, meaning) is to wish to hang on to our own experience (apart from that answerable to others)--they are not "language"; language is for expression (even to myself). As I explain in my other post on Witt's lion quote, his observation is that the desire for certainty, universality, predictability, and something private or hidden, is so that, among other things, I must know myself and can never really know the other. If I say something, I always have something extra to hold back:"my experience", so that I can avoid the responsibility I have to what I express.

That is, perhaps the notion that there is such a thing as an unchanging word use is an derived abstraction, rather than the true case. Husserl pointed out that objectivity is the result of intersubjective correlations. We convince ourselves that what is in fact only similar from one person to the next in our understanding of social conventions like words is identical. — Joshs

And here, in order to hold onto the idea of an internal, private something, we fold ourselves over with theoretical explanations, rather than looking to see how a concept is used (this is not "an unchanging word use"), in an expressive event (not all expression) in an ordinary (temporal, situational) context.

How should a psychotherapist proceed in understanding what their client means in their use of word concepts if not by attempting to discover the idiosyncratic ways in which such concepts are interrelated with a personal system of meanings for that client? — Joshs

My understanding, limited as it is, is that therapy is to bring the client to terms with the ordinary repercussions of their idea of themselves, and with the regular reactions one might have to their trauma, in contrast to the "personal system of meanings" created by their denial and avoidance. So, basically, exactly the opposite of finding "them"--dragging them into the public world.

We then [when we have differences] say they distorted , misread, misinterpreted the ‘true’ meaning of the concepts because we assumed that ...how did you put it?... “ they are not "changing" anything about the workings of that concept.” — Joshs

A. Saying there is a "'true' meaning of [a] concept" is to miss my point entirely that there is no "meaning"--there are ways that a concept is meaningful to us, and these are exactly the different criteria that frame its functioning. Also, "true" (and false) is not how most concepts (other than, e.g., true/false statements) work--you wouldn't say an apology was false, other than to say it was disingenuous.

C. People do not normally (have to) examine the workings of a concept in order to use it correctly or know when someone else is not. We grew up in a world where you must say "I do" in order to get married, that you must acknowledge some wrong in order to apologize correctly, that there is usually something fishy when you ask what someone intended, what the difference is between a game and just playing, etc. These, by the way, are the tools of Ordinary Language Philosophy (like Wittgenstein)--that there are ordinary uses for our concepts and that they work in different, semi-rational (not certain but intelligible, discussable) ways.

B. Though speaking of "semi" rational, you are now using political discourse as an example, which we can say anything about--no amount of my pointing out something isn't fair (part of how fairness is measured) may help. Though this is not to say that it is impossible to have a meaningful, productive conversation about politics--the existence of its failure does not negate its possibility. We are responsible for our denial of the other and our acceptance of our disappointments in our refusal to continue the conversation of justice. Calamitizing based on our failure in, say, the moral realm, is the skeptic's resort to throw up their hands about every concept and desire to, say, internalize something (for me), or otherwise find some solution to maintain the idea of a nevertheless workable world outside of our responsibility for/to it. I would point out that it is exactly the creation of a private world that allows someone to claim "that's not (you don't know) what I meant!" or otherwise renege on their bond for their expressions. Austin points out that it is the saying of "I do" that is crucial in marrying someone, not the idea of an internal experience of "meaning it" (apart from just a normal lie)--reserving a private experience is, among other things, the desire for a world apart from our failings.

Public and private:
For many who follow Wittgenstein public requires other discursive partners. either present or internalized. Because the public is formulated this way, it leaves no alternative except a solipsistic, rationalist realm called the private, some space sealed off from
exposure to the outside , the other, alterity, sel-transformation, creativity, etc. What this binary completely misses is a notion of the social, alterity, otherness, sociality that begins at a more intimate site than that of discurisve conventions and language games between people. It misses the idea that a self, an ‘I’ , is alway already from moment to moment not only exposed to otherness and sociality, but changed by it whether one is ‘alone’ or with other people. The self is already a sequentially sel-transforming community. There is never a self-identical’I’ to return back to from moment to moment , because the very sense of this ‘I’ has been subtly changed by its being in the world. As Heidegger says, the self is a ‘between’ , not a private space.
The avoidance of solipsism is accomplished in a more radical fashion through this thinking than via the Wittgenstienian approach.

Here’s a summary of positions that I contrasted with George Kelly’s approach in my paper, Challenge to Embodied Intersubjectivity( google it if you like).

Trevor Butt (1998a) concurs with Merleau-Ponty that "sociality can be seen as more primitive for
humankind than individuality, when our status as body-subjects is appreciated and dualist ideas
are abandoned.”
By sociality, Butt means joint ownership of meaning, which he opposes to the cognitivist
presumption of a computer-like subject controlling their own thoughts.
Chiari(2015) adds: “In other words, it is possible to conceive the relationship between two or
more persons not in terms of "interacting" individuals, but of elements of an inseparable system
in which the relationship precedes the individual psychologies.”

Along similar lines, but from a realist rather than postmodern perspective, Harry Procter has
proposed the heuristic of a ‘family construct system’, wherein relationship dynamics among the
individual members of a family function comparably to the elements
of an individual’s personal construct system.
Shaun Gallagher(2017), a writer embracing hermeneutic as well as Merleau-Ponty themes, offers
a co-conditioning model of sociality that accords with Butt’s depiction of construing as
intersubjective:

On ‘socially distributed cognition’, he writes:
“To the extent that the instituted narrative, even if formed over time by many individuals,
transcends those individuals and may persist beyond them, it may loop around to constrain or
dominate the group members or the group as a whole.”
“Collective (institutional, corporate) narratives often take on a life (an autonomy)
of their own and may come to oppose or undermine the intentions of the individual
members. Narrative practices in both extended institutional and collective structures and
practices can be positive in allowing us to see certain possibilities, but at the same time, they
can carry our cognitive processes and social interactions in specific directions and blind us
to other possibilities."

The above treatments of the social space as centered configuration makes individual behavior in
social situations the product of narrative norms, reciprocities, shared practices and social
constraints. The presupposition here is the belief that essentially the same social signs are
available to all who interrelate within a particular community, that there are such things as
non-person-specific meanings, originating in an impersonal expressive agency. I’m not
suggesting that joint activity implies a complete fusion of horizons amenable to a third-person
perspective, except perhaps in the case of Procter’s group construct system. Rather , the
first-personal stance becomes subordinated to a second-personal ‘we’, as “an inseparable system
in which the relationship precedes the individual psychologies.”

Let’s not misunderstand what I mean by making this distinction between a WITHIN-person
and a BETWEEN-person dynamic. The within-person dynamic is already a between in that it is a
thoroughgoing exposure to an outside, an alterity, an otherness. For Kelly and Heidegger, the
radically inseparable interaffecting between my history and new experience exposes me to the
world in an immediate, constant and thoroughgoing manner. I am not arguing that the meaning of
social cues is simply person-specific rather than located intersubjectively as an impersonal
expressive agency. Before there is a pre-reflective personal ‘I’ or interpersonal ‘we’, there is
already within what would be considered THE person a fully social site of simultaneously
subjective and objective process overtaking attempts to understand human action based on either
within-person constancies or between-person conditionings.

So, rather than a retreat from a thoroughgoing notion of sociality, Personal construct theory
would be a re-situating of the site of the social as a more originary and primordial grounding than
that of the over-determined abstractions represented by discursive intersubjectivities. Those
larger patterns of human belonging abstracted from local joint activity, which Merleau-Ponty’s
intercorporeal approach discerns in terms of cultural language practices, hide within themselves
a more primary patterning. While our experience as individuals is characterized by stable
relations of relative belonging or alienation with respect to other individuals and groups, the site
of this interactivity, whether we find ourselves in greater or lesser agreement with a world within
which we are enmeshed, has a character of peculiar within-person continuity. It also has a
character of relentless creative activity that undermines and overflows attempts to understand
human action based on between-person configurations or fields. We may identify to a greater or
lesser extent with various larger paradigmatic communities, delicately united by intertwining
values. But the contribution of each member of a community to the whole would not originate at
the level of spoken or bodily language interchange among voices; such constructs repress as
much as they reveal. Even in a community of five individuals in a room, I, as participant, can
perceive a locus of integrity undergirding the participation of each of the others to the responsive
conversation. To find common ground in a polarized political environment is not to find an
intersect among combatants, a centrifugal ground of commonality, but to find as many intersects
as there are participants. Each person perceives the basis of the commonality in the terms of their
own construct system.

In my dealings with other persons, I would be able to discern a thread of continuity organizing
their participation in dialogue with me, dictating the manner and extent to which I can be said to
influence their thinking and they mine. My thinking can not properly be seen as `determined' by
his response, and his ideas are not simply `shaped' by my contribution to our correspondence.
The extent to which I could be said to be embedded within a particular set of cultural practices
would be a function of how closely other persons I encounter resonate with my own ongoing
experiential process. I can only shape my action to fit socially legitimate goals or permitted
institutionalized forms to the extent that those goals or forms are already implicated in my
ongoing experiential movement. Even then, what is implicated for me is not `the' social forms, but
aspects hidden within these so-called forms which are unique to the organizational structure of my
construct system; what I perceive as socially `permitted' rhetorical argumentation is already
stylistically distinctive in relation to what other participants perceive as permitted. Each individual
who feels belonging to an extent in a larger ethico-political collectivity perceives that collectivity's
functions in a unique, but peculiarly coherent way relative to their own history, even when they
believe that in moving forward in life their behavior is guided by the constraints imposed by
essentially the `same' discursive conventions as the others in their community.

Eugene Gendlin, whose work is closely related to Heidegger’s, says “ The higher animals live quite complex lives without culture. Culture does not create; it elaborates. Then we live creatively much further with and after culture. To think that we are the creation of culture is not a view one can maintain if one senses ongoing bodily experiencing directly. Culture is crude and inhuman in comparison with what we find directly. The intricacy you are now living vastly exceeds what cultural forms have contributed to you. With focusing we discover that we are much more organized from the inside out. “

The self is already a sequentially sel-transforming community. There is never a self-identical’I’ to return back to from moment to moment , because the very sense of this ‘I’ has been subtly changed by its being in the world. As Heidegger says, the self is a ‘between’ , not a private space. — Joshs

Your summation of Wittgenstein reverses his objective: he is trying to do away with the "private", the "self" (not to say, the personal). Yes, we are "sealed off from... the other" except through language/action (we could say we are even sealed off from ourselves (our subconcious) in the same way); this is not solipsism (there is nothing kept in reserve--our makeup is, as it were, entirely public), but rather a fact of our human condition. The Other just is separate--it is our responsibility to bridge that gap through expression and understanding (where does Heidegger conflict with this?); there is no more certain, theoretical explanation or solution for our situation--no "more intimate site", and, more importantly why do we feel the need for there to be?

“ The Other just is separate--it is our responsibility to bridge that gap through expression and understanding (where does Heidegger conflict with this?)”
Heidegger does not say the Other is separate . He
says that it is built into the very notion of self. The Other is already within me, as belonging to the very definition of self. Not a self that has to reach out to the other, but a same-other differential that precedes any notion of self relating to an external other. Self and other aren’t entities in relation. They are edges of a dimension of
change. Self is never a state , self is always a change in self. Thus the ‘I’ ‘ is’ as finding itself changed(Befindlichkeit). The self ‘is’ as expression , which is why he puts discourse as equiprimoridal with attunement and understanding. To render dasein as subject encountering object is to perform what Heidegger calls a present-to-hand
modification which distorts and flattens it into a propositional statement.

The self ‘is’ an expression, which is why [Heidegger] puts discourse as equiprimoridal [existing together as equally fundamental] with attunement and understanding. — Joshs

I agree here (though still not sure where this Heidegger is from--I assume Being and Time), though I don't see why our ordinary means aren't sufficient here. Our identity, as it were, our character, our individuality, our aversion to conformity Emerson would say, is not given, but claimed, by our voicing, our expression (including actions). Emerson removes the "therefore" and simply says " 'I think', 'I am' " as emphatic assertions, as it were: standing up for what matters to us, being responsible for the public language we say. To use your Heidegger--the self is an expression; it does not exist, it is expressed. As it is, we may not exist; we carve ourselves out, or not (aligning with others, along party lines, against our mother, etc.). Being and thinking are not ever-present states of the human condition--only possibilities.

And I agree with the post-metaphysical position you assume is necessary to any modern philosophy. I would only hope that you might see that the desire to have the relationship to the Other as constant, ensured, and/or pre-existent, and thus not subject to rejection/termination, is born of the same desire for the private, hidden self or subject--that these theoretical machinations are born of the same fear of our fragile, ephemeral (or lack of any) connection to the Other and of our personal burden to our voice and to answer the claim on us of the Other. This is not subject-object; it is two individual people left with the failure of knowledge to connect them.

Or perhaps you are thinking of something as easy as the context that precedes and allows for the possibilities of our concepts, communication.

...what makes things 'matter'[?] ...desire or need to do anything other than 'live'.... the ability to want things is what now drives our lives and allows us to want to do more than just survive. It means we have our own goals and desires to fulfill in life.... Without them, none of this would matter. — existentialcrisis

To return to the topic at hand, although I balked at the phrasing of "emotions" or "feelings" initially, I do agree that what makes us human is our interest, our attraction, our desires, our needs--as you say, what matters to us. Without that, not only would we just be surviving (which I would argue some only do), but those interests are the framework of all the criteria which shape our concepts. Unfortunately, philosophy has been neurotic about allowing our human expressions of these interests (or disinterest) to be what comprises us, without its theoretical nets.

What do you think of this? Is there another reason to exist other than our own feelings? — existentialcrisis

Emotions are a personal departure from Reality. What is taking place has no inherent meaning outside of that which you give it.

If you believe that emotion gives meaning to life, then your life is simply your personal reality (which is the way it seems to be for most).

In adult life, the taking of responsibility is what gives meaning to life. Survival through doing what needs to be done is very meaningful (particularly if others are dependent on you).