I met a person who claimed to be a metaphysicist. Once over a telephone conversation, he told me to write a number down on a sheet of paper, then he guessed the number twice. Does metaphysics involve telepathy?
Probably the best synonym for metaphysics is the name that Aristotle gave it – ‘first philosophy’. It deals with the kinds of questions that are too basic and fundamental for even the sciences to answer. It is a kind of foundation, and if you have a different foundation you may have very different buildings higher up.
For example, science assumes that the universe makes sense and one that we can understand, that our perceptions are caused by an objective reality, and that what happened in the past and our memories of them can indicate what will happen in the future. But these are ASSUMPTIONS. What if they aren’t true? One of the most famous metaphysical questions is, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”
Most religions and many philosophical systems have their own metaphysical beliefs. They explain why things are the way they are instead of something different. A person who describes himself as a metaphysicist is probably someone who studies these kinds of questions. And since anything supernatural is beyond the explanation of science (or else it would be ‘natural’ instead) some people who study supernatural phenomenon look to metaphysics for those explantions.
There’s two definitions for metaphysics. The strict philisophical discipline and (for some reason) occult stuff. I’m not sure how it applies but I always get excited by seing "metaphysical bookstore" but it’s really not so amazing as one would surmise. So he could be using the word loosely in that respect. Telepathy is a touch occult.
Philisophically metaphysics is just the study of stuff that exists, the nature of being etc when you look outside of science. It’s a big area. Honestly I would suggest just browsing through the wikipedia article.
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