About definition

Hi @JayLiao, Thanks for the question! You can think of “general principles” as rules that can apply to a bunch of different circumstances, or elements of a set. So for example, “all restaurants should be closed on Sundays” is a general principle that applies to all the elements of the set “restaurants.” General principles also generally tend to have some kind of “should” aspect to them. You can basically think of them as a type of general statement. You can support them by analogy, though analogies will usually be used in conjunction with another form of argument. In this question, the example of the damaged radio helps to support the idea that it doesn’t have to be the case that “the program” (consciousness) doesn’t exist after death. So yes, it does support that statement—though I wouldn’t classify it as a “sub-conclusion.” The statement “more substantial evidence would be needed to conclude that consciousness does not survive bodily death” is the main conclusion of this argument, and this is, as you noted, based on the damaged radio analogy. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

Thank you Shun!

No problem, glad it helped!