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A premise or premiss [a] is a proposition—a true or false declarative statement—used in an argument to prove the truth of another proposition called the conclusion. [1] Arguments consist of a set of premises and a conclusion. An argument is meaningful for its conclusion only when all of its premises are true. If one or more premises are ...
A set of premises together with a conclusion is called an argument. [23] [3] An inference is the mental process of reasoning that starts from the premises and arrives at the conclusion. [18] [24] But the terms "argument" and "inference" are often used interchangeably in logic. The purpose of arguments is to convince a person that something is ...
A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises ...
An inference is the process of reasoning from these premises to the conclusion. [43] But these terms are often used interchangeably in logic. Arguments are correct or incorrect depending on whether their premises support their conclusion. Premises and conclusions, on the other hand, are true or false depending on whether they are in accord with ...
A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises: if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. It would be self-contradictory to assert the premises and deny the conclusion because the negation of the conclusion is contradictory to the truth of the premises.
An argument where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, intended to provide conclusive proof of the conclusion. deductive consequence See syntactic consequence. [81] deductive validity 1. The property of a deductive argument where, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. [82] 2.
More modern logicians allow some variation. Each of the premises has one term in common with the conclusion: in a major premise, this is the major term (i.e., the predicate of the conclusion); in a minor premise, this is the minor term (i.e., the subject of the conclusion). For example: Major premise: All humans are mortal.
Premise#n Conclusion This expression states that whenever in the course of some logical derivation the given premises have been obtained, the specified conclusion can be taken for granted as well. The exact formal language that is used to describe both premises and conclusions depends on the actual context of the derivations.