 Still, the empirical universe presents an ontological difficulty for Śaṅkara because he is an epistemic realist. He accepts that external objects are not individual subjective illusions because we perceive these effects with intersubjective agreement. The world is thus independent of mind and not wholly unreal. One may therefore argue that he contradicts himself or falls into an excluded middle (see Fost 1998). The universe either exists or does not exist, is real or unreal, and cannot be both simultaneously. His solution is to argue for a third ontological space—that the universe is an objective but less-than-real appearance. This appearance, akin to a magic trick, is māyā. All objects are unreal in that they are transient and dependent; yet are not non-existent like the horn of a hare or self-contradictory like a square circle. His understanding of what is unreal as a less-than-real appearance does not contradict what is real. The universe of names and forms holds a unique ontological position as indeterminable (anirvacanīya) as brahman or something else other than brahman (BrSūBh 2.1.14, 2.1.17; GK 2.34; see Comans 2000: 239–246 on indeterminability). It is not identical to brahman (even though reducible to brahman), but is not different either—it does not constitute a second reality. One may thus view māyā as a postulate by elimination to account for the world’s ontological inexplicability, intended to direct one toward the unity of reality. In Śaṅkara’s final philosophical position, there is only brahman without parts, attributes, or causation.