I personally identify as a metaphysicist. I would define metaphysics as the point where philosophy meets physics, because the questions being asked cannot be proven scientifically (at least not yet).
In my mind, metaphysics is similar to how Aristotle believed that objects fell to the ground because they loved the ground – it was their ‘natural desired state’ to sit on the ground. He didn’t have the word gravity since that concept was defined years later, yet he understood the basic principle that objects wanted to fall. Much of metaphysics is like that – we understand the principle but not the cause and have no way to scientifically define it at the current time.
If you ask the internet to define metaphysics you get something like this out of various robots:
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the fundamental nature of reality.
At its core, metaphysics asks:
- What exists?
- What is being?
- What is the nature of things?
- What are space, time, cause, identity, and possibility?
Traditionally, metaphysics is divided into key areas:
1. Ontology – the study of being and existence.
- What kinds of things exist? (e.g. objects, minds, numbers, properties)
- What does it mean for something to “be”?
2. Identity and Change
- How can something change and still be the same thing?
- What makes something the same over time?
3. Space and Time
- Are they real or just ways of describing relations?
- Is time linear, or could it loop?
4. Causality and Necessity
- What does it mean for one thing to cause another?
- Are some facts necessarily true in all possible worlds?
Metaphysics vs. Other Areas
- Not physics: It doesn’t study how things behave, but what they are.
- Not theology: Though metaphysics sometimes asks about God or the divine, it does so from a logical/philosophical perspective, not a faith-based one.
- Not science: But it asks what makes science possible — like what laws are, or whether things must behave the way they do.
TL;DR:
Metaphysics is the philosophical inquiry into what reality is, at the most basic level — beyond what science can measure or what logic can prove outright. can stay the same while changing.
ChatGPT 8/12/2025
While that hopefully answers some questions about what metaphysics actually is – that often just leads to more questions.
I like to think about the basis of our reality in a very conceptual way. At a certain point, all matter becomes waves and vibrations and our perception begins to break down. Ask any particle physicist to explain why the smallest particles are both waves and physical objects – and you’ll begin to understand what I mean about our perception breaking down.
I want to help people get out of mental holes that I have personally fallen into far too many times. I’m currently thinking about a new podcast called Mental Current.
A few books I’ve read leading me to this point:
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- Think and Grow Rich
- Born Rich (and other Bob Proctor works)
- The Game of Life and How to Play It (and Florence Scovel Shinn’s other works)
- The Kyballion – Three Initiates
- The Way of Hermes: New Translations of The Corpus Hermeticum and The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius
- The Crowley Tarot: The Handbook to the Cards