Traditionally it is believed that those systems count as logics which are applicable to reasoning irrespective of its subject-matter, which are concerned with the form of arguments rather than with their content. The whole idea of topic-independence (also called "topic-neutrality") and the related distinction between form and content is quite vague, however. This need not be objectionable --it has been argued-- as logic has probably no 'precise specifiable essential character' anyhow. For example, why would a proposition about beliefs be a matter of form and one about numbers a matter of content? But while the distinction between the formal and the substantive is already vague, when trying to exactly demarcate truth-conditional logics, it certainly is too vague to demarcate that part of reasoning which depends on the concept of relevancy as well. In philosophy of language the 'relevancy-conditional' aspect of reasoning belongs to pragmatics, yet this in itself does not make it less formal or more substantive. Much depends on our present state of knowledge or conceptualization in which the informal arguments of today may be formalized tomorrow. The essential point is that we do somehow distinguish the truth-conditional from the relevancy-conditional or -dependent.

When the first article of relevancy was written, it was argued that 'relevance is never a matter of form', and that the notion of relevancy had been cut dead by formal logic. Nonetheless it might be maintained that goal-dependent relevancy is a purely formal concept, because its content is a goal, and this focus of relevancy is not given by the notion itself. But even granted that we could choose any focus of relevancy whatsoever, this still would not make relevancy automatically a formal concept, if formal is defined in purely truth-functional terms. It may be true or it may be false that a distinction is made, but whether or not a distinction is made, it can still be either relevant or irrelevant. If the 'formal' were confined to the truth-conditional and the 'substantive' to the directional matter (the focus of relevancy), the notion of relevancy itself would be neither. It would have a separate status between the formal and the substantive.

As soon as we postulate that focuses of relevancy must fulfil some minimum requirements we do in fact in a very general way determine the content of these focuses (altho we shall not lay down specific goals here, or even not ends as diffuse as freedom and equality). In the next division we will see that certain minimum requirements are indeed needed for a focus to be genuine, and that without such criterions a principle of discriminational relevance would fail to be effective at all. From this standpoint relevancy is substantive in a very general sense.

We have now considered three possible positions relevancy could have: formal, intermediate or substantive. The intermediate status seems to be the most sensible one, but the choice itself is merely a question of definition. If one defines formal in a way that it is purely truth-conditional, and all the rest as substantive, then relevancy is simply substantive. If one prefers to define formal in a way that it includes the relevancy-functional (possibly in future formalizations), then it is simply formal. To fight over this issue without first having defined exactly what one formal and substantive takes to be, is an exercise in futility. After all, the lines between matter and form and between form and content were drawn long before relevancy was recognized as a key-notion in people's thoughts and actions.

Finally, the difference between substantive and formal is, unfortunately, easily confused with the difference between what is and what is not of normative significance. Truth may be an entirely formal notion, and yet this does not mean that a principle of truth --you should not utter sentences which certainly or probably are false at the time and place of utterance-- is of no normative significance. It is but too obvious that the morality of thou shalt not lie does not depend on the subject-matter of the lie.