premise
Sign in to saveA premise or premiss is a proposition—a true or false declarative statement—used in an argument to prove the truth of another proposition called the conclusion. Arguments consist of a set of premises and a conclusion.
AI overview
A premise is a statement that you use as the starting point to prove something else (called the conclusion) in an argument. It matters because arguments only work if their premises are actually true, since false or weak starting points can't reliably lead you to a trustworthy conclusion.
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A premise or premiss is a proposition—a true or false declarative statement—used in an argument to prove the truth of another proposition called the conclusion. 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 false, the argument says nothing about whether the conclusion is true or false. For instance, a false premise on its own does not justify rejecting an argument's conclusion; to assume otherwise is a logical fallacy called denying the antecedent. One way to prove that a proposition is false is to formulate a sound argument with a conclusion that negates that proposition.