Going Meta

This self-conscious wariness with which we should approach any intuition pump is itself an important tool for thinking, the philosophers' favourite tactic: "going meta"--thinking about thinking, talking about talking, reasoning about reasoning. Meta-language is the language we use to talk about another language, and meta-ethics is a bird's-eye view of ethical theories. As I once said to Doug, "Anything you can do I can do meta-." This whole book is, of course, an example of going meta: exploring how to think carefully about methods of thinking carefully. --Intuition Pumps

Just like the attention one pays to paying attention is meta attention, the thoughts one pays to thinking is meta knowledge: the thinking tools.