44 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING
- All Australians want to improve their quality of life.
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In technical terms, these 'extra premises explicitly state the necessary cross-
linking between the claims' internal connections. More generally, the premises
make clear implied information, which in the original argument would have had
to be inferred by its audience for it to make sense. In other words, adding these
premises moves the information they contain from the implied context to the
actual text. In practice, we can produce and use analytical structures with in-
dependent premises, but it is rare that these structures will be well thought out and
careful. They are, more usually, a sign that we have not explicitly considered some
further connection that should be shown in the analytical structure as a chain of
dependent premises. We will return to this issue in chapter 6, where we consider
how independent premises can only work effectively when their audience can
readily supply the hidden, implied extra premises on which they are dependent.Special functions of premises
In the groups of premises that we have explored in the first section of this chapter,
not all premises will perform the same function. Basically, there are three functions
for a premise: to make a substantive point, to provide a framework by which
substantive premises can be shown to relate to the conclusion, or to define a term
in such a way that premises make sense. We will now look in detail at the latter two,
special functions of premises.Premises that provide a framework
When premises combine to form one reason, they usually perform different
functions: each premise provides one part of the reason, but is a different type of
component. Very often, one claim in particular in a chain of dependent premises
will serve a special role in supporting the conclusion. Consider the following
argument:- Australia's education system should be properly funded by the
government.