I agree that I think metaphysical means non-physical in the sense: magical.
There are two problems with defining metaphysical as merely “non-physical”. First, people will disagree about what is non-physical (in your most recent post you suggest lack of conservation, I suggest any evidence of non-locality) and second, there’s a problem that anything that actually is discovered will be defined as physical, so we render metaphysics as impossible be definition.
I think I have a good definition of metaphysical that avoid these problems. I defined it in detail here but I’ll summarize:
Suppose we live in reality X, which includes everything that we experience and can conceivably observe. If it is possible to model X completely within X (that is, without appealing to any mechanisms outside X), than reality has no metaphysical component.
Thus I define define dualism as as assertion that reality is not self-consistently closed or complete.
When dualists say the metaphsyical exists, I do wonder what they mean, but I am confident I could convince them their definition is isomorphic to mine, or that they are physical materialists after all.
(Also) Your definition of metaphysical seems to be, “beyond our current physics”.
I wouldn’t use this definition. I wouldn’t even use the definition ‘beyond possible physics’, because with information getting lost or being inaccessible, we might not be able to figure out everything. With it’s link to “dualism” (that is, asserting there is something else besides X, alongside or containing X) I think metaphysics really needs to imply something stronger: that X cannot be complete; that X cannot be closed.
I agree that I think metaphysical means non-physical in the sense: magical.
There are two problems with defining metaphysical as merely “non-physical”. First, people will disagree about what is non-physical (in your most recent post you suggest lack of conservation, I suggest any evidence of non-locality) and second, there’s a problem that anything that actually is discovered will be defined as physical, so we render metaphysics as impossible be definition.
I think I have a good definition of metaphysical that avoid these problems. I defined it in detail here but I’ll summarize:
Suppose we live in reality X, which includes everything that we experience and can conceivably observe. If it is possible to model X completely within X (that is, without appealing to any mechanisms outside X), than reality has no metaphysical component.
Thus I define define dualism as as assertion that reality is not self-consistently closed or complete.
When dualists say the metaphsyical exists, I do wonder what they mean, but I am confident I could convince them their definition is isomorphic to mine, or that they are physical materialists after all.
(Also) Your definition of metaphysical seems to be, “beyond our current physics”.
I wouldn’t use this definition. I wouldn’t even use the definition ‘beyond possible physics’, because with information getting lost or being inaccessible, we might not be able to figure out everything. With it’s link to “dualism” (that is, asserting there is something else besides X, alongside or containing X) I think metaphysics really needs to imply something stronger: that X cannot be complete; that X cannot be closed.