Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Conclusion/Consequent: All Greeks are mortal. Each of the three distinct terms represents a category. From the example above, humans, mortal, and Greeks: mortal is the major term, and Greeks the minor term. The premises also have one term in common with each other, which is known as the middle term; in this example, humans. Both of the premises ...
Consider the modal account in terms of the argument given as an example above: All frogs are green. Kermit is a frog. Therefore, Kermit is green. The conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises because we can not imagine a possible world where (a) all frogs are green; (b) Kermit is a frog; and (c) Kermit is not green.
In modern usage, it has come to refer to an argument in which the premises assume the conclusion without supporting it. This makes it an example of circular reasoning. [1] [2] Some examples are: "People have known for thousands of years that the earth is round. Therefore, the earth is round." "Drugs are illegal so they must be bad for you.
Premises and conclusions are normally seen as propositions. A proposition is a statement that makes a claim about what is the case. In this regard, propositions act as truth-bearers: they are either true or false. [18] [19] [3] For example, the sentence "The water is boiling." expresses a proposition since it can be true or false.
An example of ampliative reasoning is the inference from the premise "every raven in a random sample of 3200 ravens is black" to the conclusion "all ravens are black": the extensive random sample makes the conclusion very likely, but it does not exclude that there are rare exceptions. [36]
We begin with a famous example: All humans are mortal. All Greeks are humans. All Greeks are mortal. The reader can check that the premises and conclusion are true, but logic is concerned with inference: does the truth of the conclusion follow from that of the premises? The validity of an inference depends on the form of the inference.
In this example, the dependent clauses preceding the comma (namely, "all men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man") are the premises, while "Socrates is mortal" is the conclusion. The proof of a conclusion depends on both the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument. Also, additional information is required over and above the ...
In logic and the philosophy of logic, specifically in deductive reasoning, a rule of inference, inference rule or transformation rule is a logical form consisting of a function which takes premises, analyzes their syntax, and returns a conclusion (or conclusions). For example, the rule of inference called modus ponens takes two premises, one in ...