Positivism

Chris joined the national guard? When did this happen? Whoa.

Science as map-making is among the best analogies I've heard. I'm going to use that one and give credit when appropriate.

Sounds like the solipsists could be called 'positivists'. Palimpsists need a better name than that, as it doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I once had an idea for a campaign in which it was all a dream, because that's such a horrid cliche- each character was the dream of a demon being tortured in hell, and the goal was to get the PCs to meet their dreamers, freeing the demons, and thus the PCs would ablate themselves.

For what it's worth, solipsism and palimpsism are orthogonal if one can subscribe to either or both philosophies at the same time. If it's exclusively either/or, then Sism and Pism are opposing. Okay, here's a great example. Affinity along the Good/Evil axis and the Lawful/Chaotic axis is orthogonal. You can be LG, LN, or LE just fine... the fact that you're Lawful means nothing in terms of good or evil. Hopefully we can put this word to bed, sorry guys.