The homology of modern Pragmatism...

Meaning is to use as theory is to observation.

Kantian gloves

“It is as if one were to say “The king in chess is the piece that one can check.”. But this can mean no more than that in our game of chess we only check the king.” – Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §136
What is the ‘but’ for here? What sort of subtle distinction is Wittgenstein making here? He is showing that a remark about what seems like a property of a thing can be translated into (or can mean no more than) a remark about what we do with a thing.

If we generalize this insight, we get: There is a Kantian projection-into-the-thing, but the projection does not stem from the subject, from our cognition, but from our actions, from our dealings with the thing. (We are not wearing Kantian glasses, but rather something like Kantian gloves.)

Necessity within/Necessity of

When we say: ‘But this is simply what we call ‘x’…’, e.g. ‘Such-and-such a result of these calculations is simply what we call a ‘necessary result’…’ or ‘Behaving like this is simply what we call ‘running’…’ – We are speaking within an existing language game, we are our taking point of departure from what we say now.

We are stating a necessity within a language game, not stating the necessity of a language game. This is immensely important, for our language games might indeed be different. The necessity we are stating when we say ‘This is simply what we call ‘x’…’ is logical in nature, but the necessity of the language game is practical in nature. Or as someone might say: The latter necessity is no necessity at all. – And there something correct in this: This necessity of a certain language game is, in one sense, beyond our reach.

The necessity within a language game is like a regulation and the necessity of a language game is like a regularity.