[Jensson]

> If you define recursion as a symbol referencing itself, either directly or indirectly, and if you define language as a system of relating symbols to each other, recursion is a linguistic concept

But that isn't what we mean with recursive function. We don't call this recursive:

    x = x + 1

Its just incrementing x.

[deeThrow94]

> We don't call this recursive... it's just incrementing x

That's not a recursive function as it's written, but you could certainly consider it a form of symbolic recursion. This just isn't a very useful characterization in an iterative/imperative context. You could frame incrementing as recursive, though—this is just peano axioms/church encoding.