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I know that we can prove a contradiction in naive set theory.

Let D be a set of all sets that don't contain itself. Say D does not contain D. Then D contains D. That means D contains itself. A contradiction. Hence, D contains D. But that means D doesn't contain itself. That means D doesn't contain D again. But we presume D contains D. So another contradiction. Because either D contains itself and D does not contain itself is false, we're pretty much stuck.

So, set theory is pretty much upgraded to kingdom come to prevent this so called contradiction. I am still unsure how after so much upgrade the contradiction is gone.

How do we know that there will be no contradiction for group or other theory? How do I know if that from some axioms like commutative, associative, have identity, etc. suddenly I found out that A is a group and not a group or something like that.

Note: The problem with one contradiction is if you can proof one you can proof anything. Say I want to proof 1=0. Say 1 is not 0. Now, let Z be a set of all sets that doesn't contain it self. Yada yada yada... Contradiction. Hence, 1=0. The sun also rises in the west (at least for the last 300 years)

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    https://web.archive.org/web/20100204093058/http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/division/full/2015-02-01

6 Answers 6

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If there is a model, then there is no contradiction. So that is how we know there is no contradiction for group theory: because there is a group.

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    But what if there is a contradiction in how we deduce things, in how we do mathematics? What if group theory is inconsistent and the reason we assume it works is because our inconsistency proves everything, including group theory's consistency (which is false)?2012-04-10
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This really isn't an answer to the question posed, but a response that is much too long for a comment.

You (Jim Thio) state that, "[S]et theory is pretty much upgraded to kingdom come to prevent this so called contradiction." I would argue that almost the opposite happened.

Cantor's original definition of a set was as followed (translated from the original German by someone other than myself):

By a set we mean any collection $M$ into a whole of definite, distinct objects $m$ (which are called the elements of $M$) of our perception or of our thought.

This definition (and the implicit set construction principles) are about as wide ranging and general as possible. Any sort of collection of objects you can think has mathematical existence as a set. Cartesian products are sets. Unions of sets are sets. There is a set of all ordinals. And finally there is a set of all sets, and the various "subsets" of this are sets.

What Russell's Paradox (and others, such as Berry's Paradox) showed is that far from being able to posit the existence of sets with abandon, one has to be careful about set existence/construction principles. The various axiomatizations of set theory are then a description of the sorts of sets that one can posit into existence (this includes the operations we can perform on sets to yield another set).

So while modern axiomatizations are undoubtedly more complicated than the naive conception of a set, what it comes down to is a restriction of the sorts of collections that may rightly be called sets. On the bright side, these axiomatizations imply that virtually any collection that you meet in the various areas of mathematics are sets. We may then ignore the particulars of the axiomatizations when constructing, say, the set of extreme points of a convex subset of a topological vector space, or the set of all smooth functions $\mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$.

As a final note (and something actually connected to the specific question asked), I recommend that you seek out a paper by the late George Boolos entitled "Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem Explained in Words of One Syllable". The first page gives a very brief and readable account of why -- unless our conception of mathematics becomes drastically different -- we cannot know that we are free of contradictions.

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The contradiction you mention is not limited to set theory: consider the statement "this statement is false". If it is true then it is false, and if it is false then it is true.

Does this imply that language is contradictory? No. What it does is to show that you cannot expect every sentence to have a truth value.

In a similar way Russell's Paradox, as your contradiction is known, only shows that you cannot go happily saying "let $D$ be a set such that this and that" and always expect it to make sense. "Naive" set theory was indeed naive.

Regarding the strength of math as a whole, the lack of formal proofs of consistency is not ideal; but there are so many connections between diverse areas and even between abstract math and real-world experience that it is very unlikely that a hidden contradiction would be there lurking to come up to the light and make the whole building crumble.

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    Say I want to proof 1=0. Say 1 is not 0. Now, let Z be a set of all sets that doesn't contain it self. Yada yada yada... Contradiction. Hence, 1=0. The sun also rises in the west (at least for the last 300 years)2012-04-10
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To be more precise than LLLLL, we cannot prove in ZFC (for example) that ZFC itself will not result in a contradiction; or if we could, this would show that ZFC is inconsistent. This is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.

But say we have a logic system where an is axiom encoded to look like "ZFC is consistent", then this logic system will "prove" that ZFC is consistent. But is this new logic system consistent...? You begin to see the problem.

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    Your answer first was confusing because you are referring to LLLLL (the person who answered here) and ZFC (I assume you are referring to Zermelo–Fraenkel something?). Always appreciate others answers as well.2012-03-14
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I think the existing answers miss something important, namely that every time mathematics encounters an apparent contradiction, we change or otherwise sharpen our ideas in order to neutralize that contradiction. In particular, our ideas about the following things change:

  1. What constitutes a valid proof.
  2. What counts as a valid definition.
  3. Which objects can be said to exist.

So how do we know that we'll never find a contradiction in Math? Because we keep on changing Math in order to avoid the contradictions.

Let me speculate a bit. I think that since so much of mathematics has been successfully applied to predict and understand the real world, this essentially proves that there is a hard core of mathematics that is consistent and coherent. It simply couldn't coherently explain the world if it didn't have this hard core. But we don't know a priori which ideas belong to this hard core and which don't, which is one reason (perhaps not the main reason) why our foundational ideas are destined to continue evolving.

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    +1, for expressing pretty much exactly what I wanted to say, much more successfully than I would have been able to.2015-02-04
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We don't. In fact, we cannot know, we know that we cannot know, and we have a proof that we can never prove there is no inconsistency. We'd have to use some external reasoning apparatus to assert that math is consistent. But then we wouldn't be able to prove that old math plus new apparatus is consistent. We'd have to add that as a new axiom, and then...

This is known as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.

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    +1 for everyone. This is the most direct answer. Thanks. By a suspended user. Yea Godel shows up several times.2012-04-02