Recursion & Reflection

Re: CYBCOM Discussions of Recursion

Recent discussions have brought to mind the many different ways that
I have understood and used the complex of concepts falling under the
term "recursion" over the past -- he computes -- forty years or so.

Early on I was much infatuated with self-referential paradoxes and
all forms of loopiness and I thought that recursion had to do with
circularities -- vicious, vicissitudinal, or just plain viscous.

Later on, after getting a few years of computing, logic, math,
and statistics under my belt, I had it impressed on me that
the circles of proper recursions were actually helices that
that wound their way down to the ground where they found
their bases in boundary conditions.  The appearance of
circularity that remains is due to the fact that our
impression of a complex object is formed by recourse
to our impressions of simpler objects, the latter
falling under the same class or concept.

Viewed in that light, the only way I could make sense of a term
like "recursive distinctioning" is to suppose that it has to do
with distinctions at higher levels of complexity being formed
by recourse to distinctions at lower levels of complexity,
proceeding downward to the givens of basic distinctions.

But that doesn't appear to fit the way its main users are
using the term.  They appear to be invoking what I would
call "higher order distinctions" or "meta-distinctions",
without insisting that these are functionally determined
by the corresponding lower order distinctions.

Am I getting the sense of that right, or not?

Jon Awbrey

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