clarity. Some contemporary analytic philosophers have endeavored to show that a good many philosophical puzzles are caused by unclear wording or by misinterpretation, and thus are dissolved rather than solved when properly analyzed. For instance, J. L. Austin has argued that many epistemological problems (epistemology is the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature and origin of knowledge) arise from a misunderstanding of such words as real and illusion. Gilbert Ryle has claimed that the