George Andrew Paul

Background

Paul, George Andrew was born on May 18, 1912 in Corsock, Dumfrieshire, Scotland.

Education

University of St Andrews and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

1939, Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. 1939-1945, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Melbourne University. 1945-1962, Fellow in Philosophy, University College.

Views

G. A. Paul wrote rather little, though his bestknown article was published the same year (1936) in which he graduated from Cambridge. During the war years he was based at Melbourne University, where he promulgated the not yet published views of the posl-Tractatus Wittgenstein, and where he is reported to have exerted an astonishing influence far outside the confines o! his own department. The remainder of his career was spent at University College, Oxford, where he taught moral, political and ancient philosophyand served for ten years as its domestic bursar. The method of philosophizing employed by Paul was very much in the British analytic tradition, but with a strong Wittgensteinian flavour. In his classic article on sense data. for example, he drew attention to the temptation to make misleading linguistic analogies: talk of sense data was more a matter of the introduction of a new notation than the discovery of new type of entity, as in the case of the fovea. Introduction ot the notation was to be judged by its convenience, but did not take us further towards a correct description of reality. He was married to the sister of F. P. Ramsey. Sources: Obituary. The Times, 16 Apr 1962: Bibli°~ graphica Philosophica 1034-1045; letter from Timothy Williamson; birth certificate from New Register House. Edinburgh; Grave.

Interests

• Perception: moral philosophy. Political philosophy.

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Main personal influences are Wittgenstein and Moore; literary influences include Hume.