...how pervasive a problem do you see this kind of thinking as being within the contemporary philosophical community as a whole , or the history of philosophy? — Joshs

Shouldn’t type while biking — Antony Nickles

For the only way in which one can test whether a series of perceptions is veridical, in this sense, is to see whether it is substantiated by further sense-experiences , so that once again the ascription of “ reality ” depends upon the predictive value of the sense-data on which the perceptions are based. So long as the general structure of my sense-data conforms to the expectations that I derive from the memory of my past experience, I remain convinced that I am not living in a dream , and the longer the series of successful predictions is extended, the smaller becomes the probability that I am mistaken — p.274

The most that we can do is to elaborate a technique for predicting the course of our sensory experience, and to adhere to it so long as it is found to be reliable. And this is all that is essentially involved in our belief in the reality of the physical world. — Ayer, P.274

1. Language is for expressing, describing and communicating thoughts and the contents of perception.
2. Language never have access to the world direct. (sic)
3. Language is the last activity in the chain of the mental events i.e. you perceive, think, then speak in that order, never the other way around. — Corvus

So it's not just the words. — frank

You can't cut down a tree, or influence it in any way, with words. — Janus

I still think words are not actions — Corvus

For some reason you seem to think, no one can understand Austin. — Corvus

I don't agree with you at all. — Corvus

"I promise to meet with you next Tuesday."

With that very utterance, the promise is made, and the obligation created. Uttering the sentence "I promise to meet with you next Tuesday" counts as placing myself under the obligation to meet with you next Tuesday.

Promises are an example of a type of performative utterance that makes something the case... Further examples would be:
A king in check with no legal move out of check counts as checkmate in a game of chess
A candidate who has the majority of votes in the Electoral college counts as the president-elect in US constitutional law.

That one ought keep one's promises is, on this account, not the result of some virtue on the part of the promiser, not an agreement between the promiser and the promisee, not something one is obliged to do because of the negative consequences that would ensue if folk broke their promises, not the result of convention or expectation, but simply what is done in uttering the word of a promise in suitable circumstances. — Banno

But you don't see the fact it was the action which changed the tree not your word. — Corvus

You spoke it to someone with a chainsaw, not to the tree. You still cannot distinguish words and actions. — Corvus

if you insist that your words do not connect to the world and that you cannot tell if you are awake or asleep and that the world ceases to exist when you sleep, then there is little common ground on which we might move forward. — Banno

There is no logical ground for me to believe the world exists during my sleep — Corvus

how would one know they are hacked when the point is for the hacker not to reveal they are hacking someone? — Antony Nickles

Can you re-assure me that nothing disastrous will happen if I follow the link anyway? — Ludwig V

By the way, there is no connection between words and the world. — Corvus

The contents of your post doesn't seem to have any points against the fact that language is a tool to describe, express, criticise and diagnose the objects and world. — Corvus

You'll be thinking "Yeah, but each of those is just more expressing and describing" — Banno

I believe Austin may be thinking that we know the concept of dreaming from 'one's own case'. — Richard B

And we might add here that descriptions of dreams, for example, plainly can't be taken to have exactly the same force and implications as the same words would have, if used in the description of ordinary waking experiences. In fact, it is just because we all know that dreams are throughout unlike waking experiences that we can safely use ordinary expressions in the narration of them; the peculiarity of the dream- context is sufficiently well known for nobody to be mis- led by the fact that we speak in ordinary terms. — p.42, my emphasis

I was confused as well because I knew Sartre and De Beauvoir to both be hardcore atheists. — T4YLOR

Jean-Paul Sartre, a man of faith — Vaskane

We're getting off the rails. — Antony Nickles

Showing that Ayer's metaphysics is misconceived is itself a deeply metaphysical activity. — Banno

1. Language is for expressing, describing and communicating thoughts and the contents of perception. — Corvus

But how do you help with this, where the whole picture and every word in it is either confused or wrong. — Antony Nickles

No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey

There's an overtone in the very terms "aphantasia" and "hyperphantasia" that I think is very dangerous. They are not necessarily pathologies — Ludwig V

The theoretical uses of language are not the core... — Ludwig V

I've very much appreciated the discussion. — wonderer1