The Cognitivity Paradox [signed]

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970. First Edition . Cloth. Near Fine/Very Good Plus. Octavo. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970. First Edition. Signed and inscribed by the author on the half-title. Octavo, 117 pp. Slate blue boards and pictorial slate-blue jacket. Near fine book in a VG+ price-clipped jacket with a faint small sticker shadow and very minimal peripheral wear. See scan (which is taken with the book protected by mylar, somewhat compromising color vividness). Under his much more familiar pseudonym, John Norman, Lange wrote the entire Gor series of Science Fiction titles which, because of the richness of its concept of sexual and other slavery as a contextually beautiful thing, spawned an entire branch of the BDSM community, that being Gorean BDSM. The Cognitivity Paradox is the only title authored by Lange alone under his given name, and this copy was the first one he signed, as per his statement to the original owner (provenance to purchase). The book itself is non-fiction, a sort of general criticism of philosophy (in fact, as it turns out, of a particular form of rigorous classical philosophy). The main thrust of his criticism is that, despite centuries of struggle within philosophy to make its endeavor a cognitive one - i.e., one which yields objective knowledge - philosophy (philosophers) has itself made that impossible by defining itself in a way which precludes, by that definition, its being cognitive. Despite statements to the contrary in jacket blurbs, Lange's own reasoning here is pretty much presented with the same uncomfortably stiff-sounding strictures, jargon and mental pigeon-holing of which formal philosophy is often guilty - if you define "formal philosophy" as an averaging-out of what full-time professional general-purpose philosophers have done over the last two hundred or so years. But he probably felt he had to do that, at the time. It was 1970. His more natural philosophizing, done as John Norman and couched largely as objective correlatives in the adventures of Gor, is much more fun to read. But this book is interesting in its own way, and certainly is unique, as his first signature ever in a copy of the only work he ever authored (alone) under his given name. l-44 n