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By "metaphysic" I mean a high-level model for phenomena or concepts that you can't immediately falsify because, though the model explains all of the phenomena you are aware of, the model is also very general. E.g., if you look at a computer processor you can say "ah, it is performing a computation", and this constrains your anticipations quite a bit; but if you look at a desk or a chair and say "ah, it is performing a computation", then you've gotten into metaphysical territory: you can abstract away the concept of computation and apply it to basically everything, but it's unclear whether or not doing so means that computation is very fundamental, or if you're just overapplying a contingent model. Sometimes when theorizing it's necessary to choose a certain metaphysic: e.g., I will say that I am an instance of a computation, and thus that a computer could make an exact simulation of me and I would exist twice as much, thus making me less surprised to find myself as me rather than someone else. Now, such a line of reasoning requires quite a few metaphysical assumptions—assumptions about the generalizability of certain models that we're not sure do or don't break down—but metaphysical speculation is the best we can do because we don't have a way of simulating people or switching conscious experience flows with other people.
That's one possible explanation of "metaphysic"/"metaphysics", but honestly I should look into the relevant metaphilosophy—it's very possible that my explanation is essentially wrong or misleading in some way.
Why would generality be opposed to falsifiability? Wouldn't having a model be more general lead to easier falsifiability, given that the model should apply more broadly?
In order to tell whether something is performing a computation, you try to find some way to get the object to exhibit the computation it is (allegedly) making. So -- if I understand correctly -- then a model is metaphysical, in the things you write, if applying it to a particular phenomenon requires an interpretation step which may or may not be known to be possible. How does this differ fr... (read more)