The Limits of Explication

Part of logic consists in uncovering ways in which logical processes of great universality and utility are over-extended, e.g., in the misguided search for the cause of everything. It is suggested here that the search for missing premises defined as premises that make a deduction out of every argument has its own limits of sense. While often useful, it is sometimes just wrongly used by requiring that the reconstructed argument have the same categorical conclusion as the original one; and sometimes inappropriately used when the argument itself does not rest upon assumptions different from itself.