2005 Winner
ACU National Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Sheehan AO with 2005 Eureka Prize winner Associate Professor James Franklin
- Associate Professor James Franklin
- University of New South Wales
Are there objective truths in ethics? Associate Professor James Franklin says, “Yes”. There are core ethical values as true as 2 + 2 = 4. These core values start with the significance and worth of each individual person.
He believes that equality in ethics is as important as the equals sign in mathematics.
Mathematics is considered one of the most objective tools we have, while ethics is increasingly considered to be subjective, related to culture and upbringing, writes Franklin.
But what if that wasn’t so? What if, like mathematics, there was a basis to ethics that was incontrovertible, a single proposition from which the solutions to all other moral questions could eventually be derived?
“Franklin’s proposition that the single core of ethics is the equality of worth of every individual person, and the conclusions he’s drawn from this in both ethics and applied mathematics, make him a worthy winner of this prize,” says Brian Sherman, President of the Australian Museum Trust.
Franklin concedes that his proposition still doesn’t make ethical problems simple.
“It does not follow, and it is not true, that pure deductions from the abstract principle of equality can solve all questions in ethics. If human life had been simpler than it is, then the implications of equality might have been straightforward. But human nature is more complicated than that of the leech.
“The actions implied by a general principle of equal worth, or an equal right to consideration, may not be identical actions. The circumstances of people matter and enter into the calculation.”
“Would that morals were like the laws of number and logic: eternal truths that absolutely constrain all possible behaviours. Then the problems of ethics would be settled on a calm and rational basis, once and for all. Evildoing would become as rare as arithmetical errors.”
“Or perhaps things would not be so simple. One can after all add up figures and write down the wrong answer, by mistake or design. And neither ethical nor mathematical truths and ideals can fight tanks.”
Franklin draws conclusions from the idea of intrinsic quality of worth and applies them to real-world mathematical topics in his work.
“The more applied work on topics such as accountancy emphasises the consequences of that ethic for responsible behaviour in the world.”
