Yes, and that's what we've done when we have a "meme about
memes/memetics".
> Metaphysics isn't physics about
> physics. It's an examination of what underlying story about the universe
> is consistent with our empirical observations and with our current
> understanding of the laws of physics.
Well, Metaphysics is kind of a special case. It's the "original meta",
i.e. the one from which we got our current idea of what "meta-" means.
What it means to us today is not what it meant to Aristotle. The
volume in Aristotle's encyclopedia was called "meta-physics" because it
came after the one called "physics".
> 'MetaX' doesn't always reduce to 'X about X'.
Of course not.
> A metamessage, for instance is not an explicit commentary on
> another message.
(Unless there is some particular usage of "metamessage" that you have
in mind), I think that that *is* what a metamessage might be.
Maybe I'm just getting hung up on the English language, but when I hear
"A yyy-message", "The yyy-meme", etc., I interpret that to mean
"A message, qualified as yyy", "The meme, qualified as yyy", etc.
Resistance is feudal.
-- John Porter jporter@btg.com