If you think ethics is the study of the question “what should we do?” then metaethics is the study of the question “how should we determine what we should do?”
Ah, I think the characterization ‘ethics of ethics’ or ‘physics of physics’ is misleading then: you don’t mean a physical theory of physical theories, or an ethical theory of ethical theories. This makes it sound like the meta-study asks the same questions as the object level study, only about the object level study. But I take it you mean that the meta-level study asks different kinds of questions; in your example, meta-ethics asks epistemological questions about ethics, while ethics asks ethical ones about the immediate objects of study.
No, I think metaethics asks ethical questions about ethics. Those ethical questions may get reduced to epistemological questions, but the epistemological questions are only important because they’re supposed to help answer the ethical question “how should we determine what we should do?” (I’m thinking of “should” here as an ethical modal operator.)
Ah, I think the characterization ‘ethics of ethics’ or ‘physics of physics’ is misleading then: you don’t mean a physical theory of physical theories, or an ethical theory of ethical theories. This makes it sound like the meta-study asks the same questions as the object level study, only about the object level study. But I take it you mean that the meta-level study asks different kinds of questions; in your example, meta-ethics asks epistemological questions about ethics, while ethics asks ethical ones about the immediate objects of study.
No, I think metaethics asks ethical questions about ethics. Those ethical questions may get reduced to epistemological questions, but the epistemological questions are only important because they’re supposed to help answer the ethical question “how should we determine what we should do?” (I’m thinking of “should” here as an ethical modal operator.)