Planetary Notation

Recursion

[[RECURSION]]

Author:: READ MONTAGUE

⠀⠀⠀⠀Neuroscientist; Director, Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute; author, Why Choose This Book? How We Make Decisions

Recursion resides at the core of all intelligence. Recursion re- quires the ability to reference an algorithm or procedure and keep the reference distinct from the contents. And this ability to refer is a centerpiece of the way organisms form models of the world around them and even of themselves. Recursion is a profoundly computational idea and lies at the heart of Gödels incompleteness theorem and the philosophical consequences that How from that work. Alan Turing's work on computable