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"\[M\]etaphysical assertions \[are\] assertions which at once have objective reference to 'how things are' and yet are not empirically falsifiable as are the hypotheses of the special sciences. Such assertions cannot be thus falsifiable because their specific use or function is to represent not the variable details of our experience of reality, but its constant structure -- that which _all_ _states of experience, regardless of their empirical contents, necessarily have in common. Thus, if a ... metaphysical assertion is false, this is not because it fails in predicting what is disclosed by our particular external perceptions, but because it misrepresents the common structure of all of our experiences, of which we are originally aware internally, and thus is falsified by _any _anyoneone_ _of them we choose to consider"_ (_(RG_ _\[1966\]: 93). _
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"\[M\]etaphysics \[is\] a distinct field of inquiry, whose task it is to raise to the level of reflective self-consciousness the fundamental assertions that must somehow be made by each of us and that none of us can meaningfully deny.

"As to the question of how metaphysical terms and assertions, which neither are nor could be empirical, must nevertheless have experiential significance, the answer is that 'empirical' as used here does not have the same meaning as 'experiential.' In its present sense, 'empirical' means applying through some but _not all_ _possible experience, while 'experiential' means applying through_ _at least some_ _possible experience, and perhaps all. Thus any term or assertion meets the second basic demand that it be experientially significant if there is at least some experience through which it might apply or which could serve to verify it. Naturally, in the case of metaphysics 'at least some' cannot be less than 'all,' the mark of a true metaphysical term or assertion being that any possible experience serves to verify it or give it application, whereas its negation or contradictory can be verified by no experience and so is not only false but meaningless" ("God and Philosophy" \[1968\]: 171 f.) _

_"\[W\]e may question ... that scientific explanation is the only explanation or, if the word 'explanation' be pre-empted for what is attempted by science, the only way of giving a rational account (in the sense of the_ _AOYov 8t8ovat)_ _ λογον διδοναι) or trying to understand and render intelligible_ _in_ _terms of our experience. Ever since Aristotle, metaphysics has been generally understood as the attempt to give a rational account of being_ _qua_ _being or, in less traditional terms, of the strictly universal structures of reality which experience discloses. But this means that no metaphysics is properly concerned with explaining why this is the case instead of that; metaphysics has the quite different task of understanding what it means to say that anything is the case at all. ... \[T\]he metaphysician's proper question is not, 'What are the facts?' but, rather, 'What is it to be a fact?'" (174)._

_"\[The\] aim of metaphysical systems \[is\] to give an integral reflective account of the understanding of existence as such" ("Theology and Metaphysics" \[1969\]: 18). _

 \[1974\]: 40).

 

 "If ... 'the intellect's self-understanding ... is the innate, a priori, or metaphysical,' ... then ... the statement 'I exist' must be a metaphysical statement, along with the other statements, The world exists' and 'God exists.' And, whatever may be true of the latter two statements (and certainly for classical as well as neoclassical theism the last is factually unfalsifiable sensu strictissimo), the first is evidently falsifiable, since it is true and can be true only contingently, even though it could never be even meaningful, much less true, to say of oneself, 'I do not exist.' In short, if metaphysics is defined as the human intellect's self-understanding, then metaphysics comprises contingent as well as necessary truths-although even the contingent truths it comprises are such that in one sense they cannot be coherently denied and, therefore, must be believed, if only implicitly or nonreflectively.
"What, then, is the criterion of metaphysical truth? ... \[I\]t is the criterion of unavoidable belief or necessary application through experience. Those statements are true metaphysically which I could not avoid believing to be true, at least implicitly, if I were to believe or exist at all; or, alternatively, they are the statements which would necessarily apply through any of my experiences, even my merely conceivable experiences, provided only that such experience was sufficiently reflected on" ("The Criterion of Metaphysical Truth and the Senses of 'Metaphysics'" \[1975\]: 47).
\--\[I\]t is possible and necessary to distinguish between metaphysics in the broad sense, for whose truth the criterion is unavoidable belief or necessary application through human experience, and metaphysics in the strict sense, for whose truth the criterion is unavoidable belief or necessary application through experience as such, even divine experience.
"By 'metaphysics in the strict sense,' one properly means metaphysica generalis, or ontology, although from the standpoint of a neoclassical theism there can be no adequate distinction between ontology, on the one hand, and theology and cosmology, as disciplines of metaphysica specialis, on the other. From this standpoint, ontology is also theology in the sense that its constitutive concept 'reality as such' necessarily involves the distinction/ correlation between the one necessarily existing individual and the many contingently existing individuals and events. Conversely, theology can only be ontology, in the sense that its constitutive concept 'God' necessarily requires that the implied distinction/correlation between God and the world be identical with that involved in 'reality as such.' Thus 'reality as such' = 'God and the world; which explains why from this standpoint ontology is also cosmology, even as cosmology is ontology.
'''Metaphysics in the broad sense,' on the other hand, should be taken to include, in addition to ontology, and hence also theology and cosmology, the third discipline of metaphysica specialis, psychology, or ... anthropology. As thus inclusive, metaphysics is integral existential truth. Conversely, integral existential truth necessarily includes metaphysics in the strict sense, as ontology and therefore theology and cosmology, even though metaphysics in the strict sense does not include anthropology, and hence is not the full truth about human existence-not even as such" (48).
"\[T\]here is evidently a whole class of assertions that intend, as merely mathematical and logical assertions hardly do, to assert something about existence, and thus are existential assertions, but nevertheless are not factual. I refer to the class of strictly metaphysical assertions, the chief defining characteristic of which is that, while they assert something to be existentially the case, they neither are nor could be factually falsifiable.
"Consider, for example, 'The universe exists,' which evidently intends to assert something about existence. What sense could it make to regard it as factual? If by 'universe' one means, as one should, 'everything there is,' then the universe, by definition, is unique; for if it includes everything there is, there can be no possibility of anything outside or alongside it. But in that case 'The universe exists' could not possibly be factually falsified. For if there cannot be even the possibility of a fact that would not be included in the universe-that being the very meaning of 'universe'-then any even conceivable fact could only verify the assertion that the universe exists, and no fact, not even a conceivable fact, could ever falsify it.