Lukas Nabergall Period 2 1/15/2013 ToK Semester 1 Exam: Topic 1 What do most people believe?

The earth rotates around the sun. Water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Maybe even that there exists a supreme being which created the universe. Some even claim that Earth, and every one on it, will eventually be destroyed within our lifetime. It is safe to say that the possession of these beliefs requires some prior stimulus, whether it is in the form of perception, reason, emotion, or language. But is it even possible to justify a belief to such an extent that it becomes absolutely, irrefutably true? Consider first the best case scenario, a proposition from first-order logic. Kurt Gdels completeness theorem immediately comes to mind; the proposition roughly states that if a firstorder formula is logically valid then there is a finite proof of the formula. This theorem was validated via a mathematical proof, which essentially uses inference to deduce a result from previously proven theorems and definitions. But there is a slight catch; if one follows the logic from Gdels argument, back to the previous results used in his argument, and so on, one will eventually stop at a series of axioms, or universally accepted principles, from which all of firstorder logic is based. These axioms, which include propositions such as the reflexivity of equality and substitution for function and formulas, are assumed to be self evidently true without formal proof. Now this is certainly not a substantial issue within first-order logic, as these axioms are of the most fundamental and basic kind. For example, it is easy to agree, without any proof, that for every variable , . To avoid any confusion, the reader should realize that logicians are not

too lazy to offer a proof; rather, the axioms are simply too fundamental for there to be any proof based on simpler propositions and definitions. By the nature of these axioms, it should become immediately apparent that we can never be absolutely certain of the truth of Gdels completeness theorem, or indeed any proposition

Lukas Nabergall Period 2 1/15/2013 from first-order logic. No matter how self evident these axioms may seem, there is always a near infinitesimal probability that they may be flawed and thus incorrect. Consequently, there is a tiny probability that many statements from first-order logic are invalid. Because first-order logic is so fundamental and intrinsic, and thus these probabilities are so insignificantly small, this is not such a great problem. It does however become a major issue when moving into higher order material, like mathematics and science. When we refer to science here, we refer to that systematic establishment which builds and organizes knowledge via testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The axioms of science are hard to quantify, but it is reasonable to say that they primarily lie in empiricism, which is the assumption that knowledge acquired by observation should form the basis of all deductions about the nature of the universe. The issue of certainty becomes even more prominent here, as not only is empiricism based on an inherent trust in the validity of our perceptions, but it is limited by our ability to perceive. For example, it would require a particle accelerator the size of the Milky Way to directly test string theory; therefore we will need a superexponential increase in the advancement of scientific methods before we can ever verify whether quarks, leptons, and bosons really are composed of 1-dimensional strings. Of course this uncertainty builds upon the incertitude inherent in the assumption of the validity of empiricism, and thus we have a system which carries with it an enormous amount of uncertainty relative to first-order logic. At this point the reader may be wondering why we believe anything if everything carries varying levels of uncertainty. Firstly, humans need beliefs in order to consciously function. Secondly, most aspects of our current societys belief system have a very low degree of uncertainty. Mathematics and science, for instance, carry an uncertainty on the order of

Lukas Nabergall Period 2 1/15/2013 or less. Despite this, there are significant facets of the space of human ideas which carry a large amount of uncertainty. Religion is possibly the greatest example; most people on Earth believe in some sort of supernatural being or force yet there is a decidable lack of any valid, falsifiable evidence supporting such beliefs. With ideas such as this, which carry an uncertainty on the order of , it is best to simply view them as neither valid nor invalid, but subjective to further

reasoning and experimentation. Beliefs should be justified via reason, perception, language and emotion to such an extent that it would be near impossible for them to be incorrect. Consequently, only the propositions of logic, mathematics, science, and most areas of the humanities should be believed, with the addition of awareness of the ever-present uncertainty.