Object level vsvs. Meta level is a distinction between levels of abstraction, with theabstraction. The object level being directlyusually is about the specifics of thea specific issue at hand, while the meta level is concerned withabout general principles, 'arguments about arguments', or 'thinking about thinking'.
Example 1: "You should care about climate change because of the general principles which applygreenhouse effect" is an object-level argument, while "you should care about climate change because the majority of scientists agree it is a problem" is a meta-level argument.
Example 2: Planning a project is an object-level thing to do, while doing a wider range of examples. project management course is a more meta-level thing to do.
It is often useful to move up and down the ladder of abstraction to get points across clearly, withclearly. Concrete object-level examples are easy to grasp and can provide grounding, while describing a concept on the object meta-level providing firm grounding and concrete examplesis helpful for a person to grasp, while the meta layer allows them to generalize a new conceptapplying it to a broad domain.
One of those tags I'm surprised we didn't already have. Good job on noticing and writing it!
I'm in favour of keeping the and – it keeps the implication that a conversation can switch between meta and object level.
Should this be "and" or "vs" in the tag title?
Object level vs Meta level is a distinction between levels of abstraction, with the object level being directly about the specifics of the issue at hand, while meta level is concerned with the general principles which apply to a wider range of examples. It is often useful to move up and down the ladder of abstraction to get points across clearly, with the object level providing firm grounding and concrete examples for a person to grasp, while the meta layer allows them to generalize a new concept to a broad domain.
FWIW, I feel that this entry doesn't capture all/most of how I see "meta-level" used.
Here's my attempted description, which I wrote for another purpose. Feel free to draw on it here and/or to suggest ways it could be improved.