Correlation & Recursion

Joseph Randolph
Philosophy
80 pgs.
2024
Paperback

CORRELATION & RECURSION, originally composed when the author was 22, is a rigorous exploration of the recursive limits of cognition, framed within an anti-realist paradigm. It begins with a critique of Meillassoux’s speculative materialism, moves through Kantian transcendental idealism, and advances to a cryptoanalytic deconstruction of the mind. The work interrogates the "outside" as an epistemic and ontological construct, proposing that psychosis and schizophrenia emerge from recursive computational failures within the mind’s internal processing systems. Central to this analysis is the identification of recursion’s inherent propensity to destabilize cognitive coherence, ultimately leading to a collapse of meaning and a shift into psychotic states. Serving as the foundational impetus for THE END OF THINKING: RECURSIVE OPACITY & THE CRYPTOGRAPHY OF THOUGHT, CORRELATION & RECURSION posits recursive feedback loops as a core mechanism of cognitive breakdown, offering a theoretical framework for the cryptographic disintegration of thought.