Premissien

Premissien is a term used in logic and argumentation to refer to premises that support a conclusion within an argument. In some languages, notably Dutch, the standard plural of premiss is premissen; premissien is an older or dialectal plural form. The singular premiss denotes a proposition assumed as true for the sake of argument, or given as a starting point for reasoning.

Premissien may be explicit, stated directly, or implicit, embedded in a speaker's claims. They function together with other premises to yield a conclusion through deductive or probabilistic reasoning. The quality of premissien affects the argument's validity and soundness: even if the conclusion follows logically, it is sound only if the premissien are true.

Examples: Premissien: All humans are mortal; Socrates is a human. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. In argumentation theory, distinguishing premises from conclusions helps analyze reasoning and identify flaws such as non sequiturs or undetermined premises.

Origin and related terms: Etymology from Latin praemissa 'things set before' via French premisse and Dutch premisse; related terms include premise, postulate, axiom, hypothesis, and syllogism.