I’ve been thinking about what I call subject-level versions of -logies / subjects, and subject-level thinking. Where, in subject-level X, you equally recognize everything in X; and in subject-level thinking, you’re thinking of the entire subject as a whole, and (preferably) not ignoring certain aspects of it

An example: subject-level quantum physics is the equal recognition of everything in quantum physics. Someone who believe the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics will probably typically not spend much time examining pilot wave theories. In subject-level quantum physics you recognize all of the interpretations equally: all of their flaws, all of their advantages, etc

That might not seem very useful, but here’s another more practical example of subject-level thinking: in paranormal studies. Suppose there is a supposed haunted house where many people say they’ve seen a spooky apparition wandering around when they’ve been there. We know just their story about seeing a ghost isn’t ultimately convincing because there are some people who won’t believe they saw a ghost, but rather they mistook something else for a ghost, or they hallucinated, etc. And generally there are two camps: people who think its a ghost (whatever a ghost is), and people who think its something mundane. But how about this: the supposed “ghost” people have seen there is actually an alien! That explanation doesn’t involve ghosts / spirits / the afterlife, and isn’t mundane. Neither side would be convinced of that explanation. However, that explanation is as good as the others (up to probabilistic considerations) until more evidence is collected to (essentially) rule it out. This explanation would more likely occur to someone whose examining the situation from a subject-level perspective. But, the subject-level thinker would then say that the “aliens” explanation is as good as the “ghosts” explanation until one is preferred over the other. And, that brings up preference: obviously some answers should be preferred over others. We are sure nothing stops aliens from existing, but not sure that ghosts exist at all, so aliens are generally preferable over ghosts

Probably true skepticism (especially pyrrhonism) is mostly subject-level thinking. In the sense that you probably have to think at the subject-level to be a good skeptic

I also wanted to write this: metaphysics really benefits from subject-level epistomology. Time and time again I see people (online) talking about models of reality and they clearly personally prefer a certain model. These people typically are completely ignorant of extremely convincing arguments for / against other reality models. And they’re almost always completely ignorant of really important problems like the fact that we can’t falsify any of the big models of reality (eg: we can’t falsify idealism, and we can’t falsify physicalism)