The Mathematician Qua Mathematician Makes Value Judgements

In this article, I aim to show that there is a type of argument for the necessity of value judgments in mathematics exactly analogous to a type of argument for value judgments in science based off of risk assessment. I develop the argument out of the conception of mathematics posited by Imre Lakatos, and I show the analogy between the two arguments by explicitly highlighting the most important structural features of both. Then, in a final section, I show some of the implications that my argument for value judgments in mathematics may have in philosophy of mathematics and in philosophy of science.