Preconditions of Conception

The world does not have to have 'sameness' in it, far less something that 'sameness' is the same as, for 'sameness' to work, grammatically.

It is only necessary that the world embodies the preconditions of the grammatical category of sameness (if we wish to talk of a world at all - and I think we should). We need not even be able to fully articulate these preconditions, although if talk of the world is to be useful we must be able, find it useful, to articulate some of them.

When I talk (meaningfully, or I am not talking) of something's being the 'same' as something else, I am depending on this grammatical category - and am therefore committed to the world's being the kind of place that will sustain the category, and my use of it. I would be projecting the conditions of the use of sameness on to the world, not finding them in it.

It might be, of course, that to attribute anything at all to the world we must be able to attribute 'sameness' to 'sets' of its 'contents' - it may be such a fundamental grammatical concept that we can't do without it in our attributions. This still doesn't mean that we have found 'sameness' (or 'sets' or 'contents') in the world in a way which accounts for - validates, if you like - the concept.

I can draw conclusions about the world (that it is constructed in such a way as to allow me to use the concept 'same') from the fact that I can use the concept 'same'. I cannot demonstrate the validity of the use of 'same' from the contents of the world - this would be circular. Particularly if 'same' has the character of being necessary for quality/content attribution in general.

If I reject the validity of the concept 'same', then I no longer need to attribute these supporting conditions to the world. I also lose a very useful concept - possibly even an essential one, if we want to say that we talk to one another. This is because it is hard to think of how we would articulate this idea without some minimal 'sameness of meaning' construction: what I believe I say is (in some minimal sense) the 'same' as what you understand me to say.

If I found I could not render my sense of  'same' intelligible to someone else, then no amount of pointing at the world would enable me to resolve this.

I may become personally convinced that those with whom I share the concept see the 'same' world as I do - that they are comfortable with what our use of  'same' commits us to saying about it. The strength of this conviction is a product of the shared use, not the grounds of it. If the shared use breaks down, if we become unintelligible to one another in this respect, then the conviction that we share a world breaks down with it - unless we attribute error or dishonesty to them, although in what language might we make this attribution? (What world do I find their error or dishonesty in?)