Jeremiah Joven Joaquin and James Franklin eds., "The Necessities Underlying Reality: Connecting Philosophy of Mathematics, Ethics and Probability" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

About this episode

The episode discusses the book 'The Necessities Underlying Reality' which connects philosophy of mathematics, ethics, and probability through the work of James Franklin.

The Necessities Underlying Reality: Connecting Philosophy of Mathematics, Ethics and Probability (Bloomsbury, 2025) is an open access book that covers four decades of work by the leading Australian philosopher, mathematician and historian of ideas, James Franklin.These interlinking essays are connected by a core theme: the necessary structures in reality that allow certain knowledge of absolute truths. Franklin's Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics shows how mathematical truths are directly about physical reality, and at the same time certainly and provably true. Ranging from mathematics to evidence evaluation to ethics, his philosophy of probability sees the relation of evidence to hypothesis, such as in science and law, as purely logical, hence necessary.Across ethics and the philosophy of religion, the theme of necessity is repeated: basic ethical truths (such as the worth of persons and the wrongness of murder) are shown to have the same certainty as mathematics. Focus on the history of ideas connects the philosophical work in the present with the medieval scholastic tradition, which defended similar necessities but is now neglected.Here is an up-to-date…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guests: Jeremiah Joven Joaquin, James Franklin

Topics covered

• philosophy of mathematics
• ethics
• probability
• Aristotelian realism
• history of ideas

Keywords

• philosophy
• mathematics
• ethics
• probability
• absolute truths
• evidence evaluation
• Aristotelian realism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bloomsbury

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