Do we sometimes prove things based on the assumption that mathematics is self-consistent?

91 Views Asked by At

Do we sometimes prove things based on the assumption that mathematics is self-consistent?

I recently started to be dubious about proofs by contradiction. It seems to me that it is somehow based on the assumption that whatever we do in mathematics we will never arrive at a inconsistency, i.e. something that is proved to be both true and wrong.

Should we worry about this? Are we confident that mathematics is self-consistent? Or is it an issue at all?