ABSTRACT
The allegation that philosophers are confused by the forms of ordinary language and misled into the formulation of absurd theories is not proven. In fact, the errors imputed to the philosophers are errors they have not made and are such as would be committed only by the intellectually deficient. The linguistic analyst suggests that the question whether or not there are sense-data is misleading because it seems to refer to a peculiar kind of entity distinguished from, yet specially related to, material objects, whereas it is really a question about the terminology one intend to use for describing perceptual experiences. The attempt to show that some traditional philosophical problems are only apparent, and arise only from the way in which one talk about certain matters, fails because the problems remain however one choose to alter the way of speaking, so long as one continue the words to refer to the same subjects.
