Researcher

Professor James Franklin

My Expertise

Philosophy of mathematics; Catholic history & philosophy; Australian philosophy; foundations of ethics; ethics in mathematics; careers in mathematics.

Fields of Research (FoR)

History and Philosophy of Specific Fields, Statistics, Pure Mathematics

SEO tags

Biography

ABOUT ME

 

Biography

My research covers the philosophy of mathematics, extreme risk theory, ethics and the history of ideas. In all cases it combines the insights of mathematics (with its proofs, certainty and objectivity) with the culture of humanistic scholarship (with its understanding of how humans approach knowledge).

Education

  • BA (Hons) in pure mathematics, Sydney University, 1974
  • MA (Hons), Sydney University, 1976
  • PhD in Mathematics,...view more

ABOUT ME

 

Biography

My research covers the philosophy of mathematics, extreme risk theory, ethics and the history of ideas. In all cases it combines the insights of mathematics (with its proofs, certainty and objectivity) with the culture of humanistic scholarship (with its understanding of how humans approach knowledge).

Education

  • BA (Hons) in pure mathematics, Sydney University, 1974
  • MA (Hons), Sydney University, 1976
  • PhD in Mathematics, Warwick University, 1982

 

RESEARCH

 

Research Goals

  • To complete a realist philosophy of mathematics, with a concentration on applied mathematics
  • To develop a philosophy of probability and statistics based on objective Bayesianism
  • To understand the foundations of ethics from the perspective of a natural and inherent “worth of persons”
  • To explain the interaction of data and expert opinion in the evaluation of extreme risks
  • To understand the main lines of Australian Catholic history.

Research in Detail

In the philosophy of mathematics, my 2014 book, An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics, developed a realist alternative to Platonism and nominalism, arguing that mathematics is the science of certain aspects of the real world, especially the quantitative and structural ones.

My 2022 book The Worth of Persons: The Foundation of Ethics explains how ethics in the sense of what to do follows from something more basic, the worth of persons arising from their rationality, consciousness and emotional structure.

My research on extreme risks looks at the problems of combining very small amounts of data with expert opinion to reach reasonable estimates of the chance of very rare events with large negative consequences.

My work in the history of ideas includes two books, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (2001/2015) and Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia. My 2023 book, Catholic Thought and Catholic Action: Scenes from Australian Catholic Life showed how ideas translated into practice.

Research Grants

  • J. Franklin and C. Legg, ARC Discovery Grant 2006 - 2008, Recovering the virtue of self-control or temperance to strengthen the Australian social fabric
  • J. Franklin and D.M. Armstrong, ARC Discovery Grant 2007 - 2009, Mathematics, the science of real structure: an Australian realist philosophy of mathematics

Current Student Projects (Masters and Honours)

The role of logic in an Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics

Objective Bayesianism as a foundation of the theory of probability and evidence

Advice for prospective students

Young would-be researchers should aim at technical perfection in some subfield as a springboard for wide-ranging inquiry into the important questions.

 

TEACHING & OUTREACH

 

Courses I teach

Now retired

Professional affiliations and service positions

I am the founder of the Sydney School in the Philosophy of Mathematics

I am the editor of the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society

Since 2012 I have been a member of the Council of St John’s College, Sydney University

I set up the Australian Database of Indigenous Violence

 

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

 

Eureka Prize for Research in Ethics, 2005


My Awards

Eureka Prize for Research in Ethics, 2005

Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 2019


My Engagement

I am the editor of the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society.

View less

Location

School of Mathematics and Statistics
University of New South Wales
Kensington NSW 2052

Contact

9428 5306
9385 7123

Videos

An overview of my book What Science Knows: And How It Knows It
How quantification in ethics works, from equality of persons to calculation of compensation.
Short (8-min) introdcution to the Aristotelian alternative to Platonism and nominalism in the philosophy of mathematics: mathematics is about quantitative and structural aspects of the physical world.
Short (16-min) introduction to the idea of proof in mathematics and how to prove in the simplest cases, such as "The square of any even number is even."
The life and work of Sydney's most prominent philosopher.
James Franklin on What Science Knows
James Franklin on Quantification in Ethics
Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics
Proof in Mathematics: The Absolute Basics
David Armstrong (1926-2014), Sydney philosopher