“Metaphysician” is the standard answer:

• Google says: Results 1 - 10 of about 341,000 for metaphysician [definition]. (0.30 seconds)
• The definition linked there says: “One who specializes or is skilled in metaphysics.”
• This seems also to be the standard usage among philosophers, in journals, etc.

But isn’t that nonsense?  Philosophers who think about causation, composition, or time aren’t taking the starting points of physicians and then asking about the fundamental assumptions and constituents of medical science.  Philosophers who think about time and causation are taking the starting points of physicists, and then asking about the fundamental assumptions and constituents of physics (at least, they are when they’re doing it right; metaphysics disconnected from physics is probably just scholasticism?).  Aristotle called it “metaphysics” because it was the book that came after “physics.”

But things look pretty grim for “metaphysicist”:

• Google says: Results 1 - 10 of about коли под наем74,500 for metaphysicist.
• The front page of search results refers to weird and overly specific positions.
• No working “metaphysicists” refer to themselves as such, nor does anyone else.

…[T]he image is not formed from light that hits the object and bounces back. The camera collects photons from the light sources that did not hit the object, but are paired through a quantum effect with others that did. An image of the toy begins to appear after approximately a thousand pairs of photons are recorded. [link]

Doesn’t this sort of thing put more pressure on fans of restricted composition?  With every push against the Newtonian view of the world as composed of bits of stuff bumping around against other bits of stuff, it seems more difficult to argue that there really is a limited set of cases in which bits of stuff compose.

Feed the Animals: what happens when you lock renegade North Pole elves, powdered sugar, the entire history of popular music, a carnival, a man with a sledgehammer, and some blank mix tapes in a room.  You can pay what you want.

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In Poland, this guy experiments on himself endlessly to work out the best means of memorizing complete world knowledge, while we Americans put every fact on Wikipedia, moments before forgetting it, and hope for the best.

Introducing Gmail Custom TimeTM Be on time. Every time.*

How do I use it?

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option. [link]

Note the comments of “Michael L., Epistemology Professor.

1. Strategically, very smart of him to take a media-driven, essentially vapid potential swiftboating and turn it into an opportunity to make a substantive statement about race in this country. Everybody knows that Obama excels at long speeches, and although he probably could’ve waited this one out until it went away, by tackling the issue head-on he was able to reclaim some ground and go back on the offensive.
2. He hit back at critics today in two ways: first, by ridiculing the insistence on discussing trivialities and distractions about Wright, Ferraro, etc. instead of substantive policy questions:
   

   For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

   We can do that.

   But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

   That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

   Second, by acknowledging and addressing the issue of white resentment in a way I don’t recall any other Democratic politician doing, he can take away (or at least blunt) one of the weapons that conservatives have quietly relied on for so long:

   Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism….And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

3. His tone is just about perfect for a US general election: he responds to detractors without getting angry or defensive, and is really good at staying calm and “on message” without seeming like he’s having to work to stay on message.

Some relevant links:

• The full text of the speech
• Video
• Yglesias
• Unfogged
• Apparently, he wrote it himself