A member of the faculty at Amherst since 1988, George received a B.A. degree from Columbia University and earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He is editor of Reflections on Chomsky (1989), Western State Terrorism (1991) and Mathematics and Mind (1994). His most recent philosophy book, written with Daniel Velleman, professor of mathematics at Amherst, was Philosophies of Mathematics (2002). With his Amherst colleague Lawrence Douglas, George is co-author of Sense and Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature (2004). Douglas and George also have published humorous work together in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, McSweeney’s and the Boston Globe, among other publications, and they contribute a regular column to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Organized broadly into four parts, entitled "What can I know?", "What ought I to do?", "What may I hope?" and "What is man?",