Meta

Meta-level is loosely used to refer to a higher-level perspective, in the discourses, structures, or languages ​​are treated as objects. Find the meta-level in the same structure instead, which they spoke, and it is a case of self-referentiality. It can be searched more new meta-level, meta-level there is not an absolute. What comes as a meta-level in question, depends on the choice of a methodological perspective. If a systematic study carried out at the meta-level, so the result is a meta-theory.

General

On the meta-level generalizations and general structures of the subject area of the underlying structure objects are usually made ​​. There will be those principles investigated, according to which that which occurs at the object level as a single instance happens. The mixing of (object) level and meta-level is a way to create self-referential statements or images, which can occasionally lead to paradoxes (eg, the barber paradox or the so-called Liar antinomy ).

Examples

The scientific theory is a meta-level to science, by examining the scientific methods that serve the study of natural phenomena. However, the phenomena themselves do not " level "; science is therefore not a meta-level nature. In contrast, the sociology of science regarded science as a sociological phenomenon, so it is a meta-level for the scientific enterprise (see also meta-science ). However, knowledge of sociology and philosophy of science both for each for themselves and for each other as a meta-level occur ( philosophy of science philosophy of science, philosophy of science sociology of knowledge, sociology of knowledge, philosophy of science, sociology of knowledge sociology of knowledge ).

In everyday communication, a discussion or an argument, which deal not with concrete factual issues, but to the outer frame ( spokesperson, conditions, terms ) or internal problems ( discussion style) a discussion, referred to as meta-level or meta-discussion. When wearing meta-discussion and debate discussed by the same speakers, so there is a case of self-referentiality.

In the media science and art - for example, in literature and film - is called a meta-level if the respective production or creation of a work itself becomes the content of the work.

• Well-known examples are eg film 8 ½ by Federico Fellini and the Blair Witch Project. But this is a "making -of " distinction, which is not spoken in the factory about filmmaking, but on any events from the production process. However, the examples above are also cases of self-referentiality.
• The well-known image of La trahison images ( literally: " The Treachery of Images " ) by René Magritte, one pipe with the words " Ceci n'est pas une pipe. " Maps ("This is not a pipe. ").
• A case of fictitious self-referentiality is in the famous novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.