A
premise or
premiss is a statement that an argument claims will induce or justify a conclusion. In other words: a premise is an assumption that something is true. In
logic, an
argument requires a
set of (at least) two declarative
sentences (or
"propositions") known as the
premises or
premisses along with another declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the
conclusion. This structure of two premises and one conclusion forms the basic argumentative structure. More complex arguments can use a series of rules to connect several premises to one conclusion, or to derive a number of conclusions from the original premises which then act as premises for additional conclusions. An example of this is the use of the
rules of inference found within
symbolic logic.