&gt;<i>Why do things have to be in any state, even a &quot;non-specific intermediate&quot; one?</i><p>Because being in a state is just another name of being a thing (or plain &quot;being&quot;). If you &quot;are&quot;, by definition you are in some state (at any given point in time).<p>&gt;<i>Can&#x27;t we just assert that language doesn&#x27;t assign or derive from a formal state? Rather, the use of language is highly correlated with outcomes&#x2F;observations, but not intrinsically meaningful.</i><p>Well, even without using language, we experience things as being in particular states -- we see them having color, making a noise, being there and not here, etc.