  Here is a little philosophic argument I’ve had with me since High School: I contend there exists something external to me. By external I mean things “not dependent for their existence on our minds.” (Soames p. 15) By “me” I mean everything not under the control of my conscious will. With terms defined this way, all I need to prove an external world is something (anything) not under my conscious will. Since there are many things existing outside of my control; therefore, something, I-know-not-what, exists separate from me.
The most obvious counter argument to this is claiming that the self includes things such as the subconscious, and that things seeming not to be under my control are actually the result of my subconscious and thus actually under my control. Hogwash. I cannot see any promise in the attempt to extend the self beyond the conscious mind. What makes the subconscious special? Because it is near the parts of our brain that produce our conscious mind? Absurd. Because it directly inputs into our conscious mind? So do my eyes. So could a computer. Actually I am sure scientists have directly stimulated the conscious mind. If I hooked up a computer to my conscious mind and feed it images, would the computer be part of “me”? No. It seems once you extend the self beyond the confines of the conscious mind you are on a slippery-slope to include anything as part of the self. The subconscious is just as an arbitrary thing to make a part of the self as the eye or foot are.
With all this said, it is very philosophically uninteresting. So there is “me” and there is “other” but that is all we can get. When I was a kid I always thought Descartes could know two things with absolute certainty: That he existed, and that something else existed. This, of course, doesn’t get you very far. 
