Thanks. That's still not even a little intuitive to me, but it's a Monday and I had to be up absurdly early, so if it makes any sense to me right now (and it does), I have hope that I'll be able to internalize it even if I always need to think about it a bit. We'll see, probably no sooner than tomorrow though (sleeeeeeeeeep...).
I suspect that part of my problem is that I keep trying to decompose "metaphysics" into "physics about/describing/in the area of physics" and my brain helpfully points out that not only is it questionable whether that makes any sense to begin with, it almost never makes any sense whatsoever in context. If I just need to install a linguistic override for that word, I can do it, but I want to know what the override is supposed to be before I go to the effort.
The feel-good-word meaning seems likely to be a close relative of the flag-statement-as-bullshit meaning. That feels like a mental trap, though. The problem is, at least half the "concrete" examples that I've seen in this thread also seem likely to have little to no utility (certainly not enough to justify thinking about it for any length of time). Epistemology and ethics have obvious value, but it seems metaphysics comes up all the time in philosophical discussion too.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.