Metaphysical Principles

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I have a scientific background. My way of understanding the world is through observation and measurement. Understanding and applying the Laws of Physics are how I make my living. Materialism is my way of life.

However, I have worked as a "psychic", having performed (and the key word is "performed") tarot readings, cold readings, and astrological readings for fun and profit.

Just as isotropic electro-magnetic radiation obeys the Inverse-Square Law, it may be safe to assume that if metaphysical principles exist, they consistently obey well-defined principles that can be clearly stated, and that can easily explain how they work.

Keep in mind that I am not asking you to explain human behavior, cryptozoology, the Mind of God, or your favorite conspiracy theory - I am asking you to explain alleged metaphysical principles in terms that a critically-minded electrical engineer can understand.

Also keep in mind that my background as a "psychic" gives me exceptional insight into false beliefs, con games, double-talk, and outright lies.

So, I have a few questions regarding any alleged metaphysical principles you know about.

1) How many metaphysical principles are there? (There are from 3 to 130 on the Internet.)

2) What are the metaphysical principles, as you understand them?

3) How and why do they work?

4) If you can express your metaphysical principles in mathematical terms, will you please do so here?

Thank you.

Max Tegmark's Computable Universe Hypothesis could be considered a single metaphysical principle: physical reality is a mathematical structure. It "works" because math is everywhere we look. I believe your fourth question might be redundant in this context.

M.Tegmark's hypothesis is just another philosophical diatribe. I'm actually looking for predictive principles more along the lines of "If you do A and B, then C will be the result". I should have been more clear on this.

For instance, if you burn pure hydrogen (H₂) in the presence of pure oxygen (O) the result will be water (H₂O). This is a predictive principle.

Do you have any of those related to metaphysics?

It seems as though you're looking for examples of synthetic a priori propositions. I personally don't know of any that aren't directly related to math, but this might be related to the facts that (a) I've spent a lot more time and effort studying math than philosophy, and (b) I confess that I never really "got" Kant.

Nevertheless it seems that Euclid's Fifth Postulate would be such an example:

interesting topic
thanks

For those of you who, like myself, don't have a good grasp of Metaphysics but who feel they might be interested, this site I turned up when I was searching for "Metaphysical Mathematics" might be a good place to start.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Metaphysi ... eality.htm

I think this might have me moving in the right direction. I start to get the feeling Mathematics as applied to Metaphysics involves answers that at first seem vague to me. Perhaps time (or my perception of such ) will change this.

If answers of that quality existed there'd be no materialism vs. idealism debate and you probably would have heard of them a long time ago.

One of the reasons I pushed myself ahead into meditation and yogic routines and even joined a couple mystic fraternities is because I didn't believe that I could find answers like that from books - for exactly the reasons you cited.