metapremises

Metapremises are premises about premises, used at the meta level of reasoning to govern, justify, or reflect on the use of other premises and deduction rules. They do not assert facts about the domain under investigation; instead they concern the status, acceptance, or structure of the arguments that rely on object-level premises.

In practice, metapremises distinguish the framework of a discussion from the claims about the subject matter. Object-level premises are propositions about the world or a theoretical domain. Metapremises, by contrast, state conditions or assumptions about the reasoning process itself. For example, a metapremise might assert that a particular inference rule is sound, that the given set of premises is consistent, or that only verifiable premises may be used in the argument. Another common metapremise is the acceptance of a chosen logical framework, such as operating under classical logic with the law of excluded middle.

Metapremises play a central role in formal systems and metatheory. They underlie the justification of inference rules, axioms, and the overall architecture of a proof system. By making meta-level assumptions explicit, metapremises help analysts assess the reliability and limits of conclusions, distinguish what is proven from how it is proven, and clarify the normative or methodological commitments of an argument.

In philosophy of logic, epistemology, and formal verification, metapremises are instrumental for discussing the boundaries of reasoning, the transparency of proofs, and the criteria for accepting premises. They are studied within metatheory and metalogic as statements about the rules and foundations that govern object-level discourse.