"Background assumptions" refers to the beliefs or ideas that someone holds without even realizing it. These assumptions can shape their thoughts and actions without them being aware of it.
Sentences with «background assumptions»
(Were not David Hume and Adam Smith, under different background assumptions but with the same Augustinian sense for real experience, to make an analogous point?) (firstthings.com)
Wilfred M. McClay replies: Both Paul Bischoff and Bruce Marr have misconceptions about the intent behind my article, and about the background assumptions of the symposium of which it was a part. (firstthings.com)
The background assumptions that had given some plausibility to Christian affirmations about God through the eighteenth century were gone so far as the intelligentsia was concerned. (religion-online.org)