Preliminaries
 
Anything approaching a fully satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of knowledge requires the co-operative efforts of all those who believe that there is a world of real existence independent of human minds and that this real existence can be truly known as it really is.
— Francis Parker, “Realistic Epistemology
 
 
Let's get a few things clear:

proposition: a unit of thought that must be either true or false.

sentence: a grammatical construct that expresses a proposition.

true: A proposition is true if an only if what it states is the case.

self-evident: A proposition is self-evident if and only if it can be seen to be true simply by understanding it.

axiom: a proposition with the property that it cannot been proved, and any attempt to disprove it not only must assume it but use it.

postulate: a proposition that has been neither proven nor disproven, but which seems to be true.

assumption: a proposition the truth of which is unknown, but which is treated as true for testing or other purposes.

valid: An argument is valid if and only if, all the premises being true, the conclusion cannot be false.

sound: An argument is sound if and only if all the premises are true and the argument is valid.

premise: a proposition forming part of an argument.

argument: a collection of propositions purporting to support a conclusion.
 
 
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