Modern logic has Wldergone some remarkable developments in the last hun dred years. These have contributed to the extraordinary use of formal logic which has become essentially the concern of mathematicians. This has led to attempts to identify logic with formal logic. The claim has even been made that all non-formal reasoning, to the extent that it cannot be formalized, no longer belongs to logic. This conception leads to a genuine impoverishment of logic as well as to a narrow conception of reason. It means that as soon as demonstrative proofs are no longer available reason will no longer dominate. Even the idea of the 'reasonable' becomes foreign to logic and such expres sions as 'reasonable decisions', 'reasonable choice' or 'reasonable hypotheses' would be put aside as meaningless. The domain of action, including method ology and everything that is given over to deliberation or controversy - i.e., foreign to formal logic - would become a battleground where necessarily the reason of the strongest would always prevail.

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Authors and Affiliations

University of Brussels, Belgium

Chaïm Perelman

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The New Rhetoric and the Humanities
Book Subtitle: Essays on Rhetoric and its Applications
Authors: Chaïm Perelman
Series Title: Synthese Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9482-9
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland 1979
Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-277-1018-5Published: 30 November 1979
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-277-1019-2Published: 30 November 1979
eBook ISBN: 978-94-009-9482-9Published: 06 December 2012
Series ISSN: 0166-6991
Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIV, 180
Topics: Logic, Social Sciences, general

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

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