Adbacannacorrections


 

    
A Dialectical Analysis of the Ad Baculum 
Fallacy 
 
DOUGLAS WALTON 
 
Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation & Rhetoric  
Department of Philosophy  
University of Windsor  
Windsor, ON  
Canada N9B 3P4  
dwalton@uwindsor.ca 
 
Abstract: This paper applies 
dialectical argumentation structures 
to the problem of analyzing the ad 
baculum fallacy. It is shown how it 
is necessary in order to evaluate a 
suspected instance of this fallacy to 
proceed through three levels of 
analysis: (1) an inferential level, 
represented by an argument diagram, 
(2) a speech act level, where 
conditions for specific types of 
speech acts are defined and applied, 
and (3) a dialectical level where the 
first two levels are linked together 
and fitted into formal dialogue 
structures. The paper adds a new 
type of dialogue called advising 
dialogue that needs to be applied at 
the third level. 
 

Résumé: Cet article applique les 
structures d'argumentation   dialecti- 
que au problème de l'analyse du 
sophisme ad baculum. Afin 
d'évaluer un présumé exemple de ce 
sophisme, on montre qu’il est 
nécessaire de passer par trois 
niveaux d'analyse: (1) un niveau 
d'inférence, représenté par un 
schéma d'argument, (2) un niveau 
des actes de langage, où des 
conditions pour certains types 
d'actes de langage sont définies et 
appliquées, et (3) un niveau 
dialectique où les deux premiers 
niveaux sont reliés entre eux et 
intégrés dans des structures 
formelles de dialogue. Cet article 
ajoute un nouveau type de dialogue 
appelé dialogue de conseil qui 
s’applique au troisième niveau.  

 
Keywords: argument from threat, argument from consequences, advice-
giving dialogue, dialectical tier, pretending to advise, informal fallacies, 
types of dialogue, argumentations schemes. 
 
1. Introduction  
 
     The objective of this paper is not to give an overall survey of 
ad baculum arguments. That has already been done in the 
literature, for example in (Walton, 2000). This literature already 
abundantly recognizes that not all instances of ad baculum 
arguments are fallacious. The focus of this paper is on the ad 
baculum fallacy, and the aim of the paper is to show that it 
needs to be modeled as a dialectical failure, and thus cannot be 
explained as a purely inferential failure of some sort. The paper 



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presents a ten-step evaluation procedure for evaluating whether 
a given instance of an ad baculum argument is fallacious or not, 
and a dialectical theory explaining why such an argument is 
fallacious, if it is, or why not, if it is not.     

The ad baculum fallacy is said by the logic textbooks, such 
as Copi and Cohen (1990, 105) to consist in the “appeal to force 
to cause the acceptance of some conclusion”. The normal way of 
doing this is to make a threat. Some relatively simple examples 
of this tactic found in the informal logic textbooks are cases of 
the use of a direct threat by an arguer. More complex cases 
involve the use of an indirect threat. For example, Copi and 
Cohen add that an ad baculum argument can be applied with 
“considerable subtlety” if the arguer uses a “veiled threat” that 
makes no explicit or direct threat to intimidate a respondent. The 
ad baculum argument built on such an indirect threat has tended 
to be a more difficult kind of case to pin down and evaluate by 
the traditional methods of logic, which define an argument only 
as a set of propositions comprising premises and a designated 
member of the set called the conclusion. But in ad baculum 
examples, context, suggestion and innuendo or implicature are 
involved, as shown in this paper. Is there some objective way to 
use such contextual evidence to furnish an objective method to 
evaluate ad baculum argument of this kind? This paper provides 
such a method by showing how the inferential and speech act 
level of analysis of this fallacy needs to be extended to a 
dialectical level, the so-called dialectical tier of Johnson (1996).  

Section 2 gives a brief review of the relevant literature on 
the ad baculum fallacy. Section 3 presents a simple example of a 
direct threat argument from the artificial intelligence literature 
and a more complex textbook example of an indirect threat, and 
uses simple argument diagrams to make a first pass at grasping 
the structure of the arguments. Argumentation schemes are 
applied in sections 4 and 5 to insert additional implicit premises 
and conclusions into the arguments to get better analyses of the 
logical structure of the examples. Section 6 formulates sets of 
requirements that define three types of speech acts, the speech 
act of warning, the speech act of advising, and the speech act of 
making a threat. Section 7 briefly explains the notion of an 
indirect speech act. Section 8 steps up to the dialectical tier by 
introducing a new type of dialogue called advising dialogue to 
the existing classification of types of dialogue that function as 
frameworks for argumentation. Two examples from Consumer 
Reports are given to illustrate this type of dialogue and reveal its 
main characteristics. Section 9 presents a dialectical analysis of 
the argumentation in both examples. The analysis explains why 
the argument in each example should be taken to be an instance 



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of the ad baculum fallacy or not. Section 10 explains how the 
fallacy works in the example by showing the juxtaposition of 
appearance and reality that is revealed once the dialectical 
structure of the argumentation in the case has been analyzed. 
Section 11 summarizes the method of evaluating ad baculum 
arguments as a ten-step procedure and offers some general 
conclusions and suggestions for further research. 
  
 
2.  The literature on ad baculum 
 
According to the account given in this paper, not all ad baculum 
arguments are fallacious. The goal of the paper is to diagnose 
what has gone wrong when such an argument is used 
fallaciously, and so the brief survey of the literature in this 
section covers previous attempts to solve this problem. A wider 
survey on the ad baculum arguments can be found in (Walton 
2000). 

Woods and Walton (1976) surveyed the accounts of the ad 
baculum fallacy in the logic textbooks, concluding that these 
accounts have so far failed to solve the problem of explaining 
why the ad baculum argument is fallacious. They analyzed the 
form of the argument as being a disjunctive syllogism of a kind 
that can be classified as a prudential type of argument. However 
they added that in many instances such a prudential argument 
could be seen as reasonable. They concluded that the question is 
open on how instances of arguments normally classified as ad 
baculum in the logic textbooks can be diagnosed as fallacious. 
Woods (1987) reaffirmed the earlier Woods-Walton conclusion 
that argumentum ad baculum can be a reasonable form of 
argument because it meets the standards required for 
prudentially sound argument. An argument from negative 
consequences can often be a good argument by incorporating a 
threat to negative consequences, that can often be a reasonable 
basis for one party to commend a certain line of action to 
another party. 

Opinions in the literature on ad baculum are sharply divided 
on the issue of whether trying to build a dialectical analysis of 
the fallacy is a good direction for research. Van de Vate (1975) 
characterized this type of argument as being inherently 
dialectical. Van de Vate made this point as follows (1975, 45): 
“Regarding the appeal clearly as an appeal to force must involve 
at least two parties. One can’t appeal to force to oneself." In 
order to understand the fallacy, he theorized that one must 
situate the ad baculum argument in the context of an 
argumentative exchange between two parties. Wreen (1988) 



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argued that the ad baculum fallacy is not dialectical and is not 
based on threats. Brinton (1992) argued that the ad baculum 
fallacy is dialectical and is based on threats. Walton (2000) 
argued that the ad baculum fallacy is dialectical. 

The exchange between Wreen (1988) and Brinton (1992) 
was particularly significant in suggesting directions that future 
research on the ad baculum fallacy would take. Wreen offered a 
number of examples of the ad baculum fallacy, and showed that 
they centrally involved a particular form of argument in which 
one party threatens another party by advising the other party that 
he should carry out a particular action or suffer some negative 
consequences which the first party will bring about. He offered 
the following typical example: if you don’t give me your 
money, I will shoot you; getting shot would be a very bad 
outcome for you; therefore you should give me your money. 
Wreen saw this inferential structure as an instance of the form of 
argument known in the literature as practical reasoning. Brinton 
went on to argue that Wreen’s theory was a good starting point, 
but it failed to take into account other elements that are 
necessary for an adequate model of the ad baculum argument 
that can be used to explain how the fallacy works. 

Brinton (1992, 90) argued that the structure of the ad 
baculum fallacy involves what he called an agent-patient 
relationship, a context of use into which the inferential structure 
of the ad baculum argument is embedded. He argued that 
successful use of the argumentum ad baculum presupposes a 
relationship of power between two parties. On this account of 
this relationship, one party plays the role of an agent while the 
other plays the role of the patient (Brinton, 1992, 91). In this 
framework the agent arguer imposes a “presence” on the other 
party that creates a reason for action within the argument itself. 
This separation of the inferential and transactional aspects of the 
argumentum ad baculum turned out to be a prescient indicator 
of the direction future research on the ad baculum fallacy would 
take. Brinton’s notion of the power relationship between the two 
parties in an ad baculum argument foreshadowed the status 
function (see below) used by Budzynska and Witek (2014, 
section 3.3) to analyze the ad baculum fallacy. 

Kielkopf (1980) complained that the textbook treatments of 
the ad baculum fallacy are superficial and misleading. He cited 
the treatment of the fallacy in Copi’s widely used textbook, 
saying it is “committed when one appeals to force or the threat 
of force to cause acceptance of a conclusion.” On Kielkopf ‘s 
account, (1980, 2), this explanation is superficial because it fails 
to “distinguish between what is relevant as a reason for acting, 
from what is irrelevant for thinking that a claim is true”. This 



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conclusion reinforced the point made by Woods and Walton 
(1976) and Woods (1987) that appeal to force or the threat of 
force to cause acceptance of a conclusion,for  example in 
diplomatic negotiations,may not necessarily be fallacious. 

In (Walton 2000) a distinction was drawn between three 
kinds of arguments traditionally classified by the logic textbooks 
as falling under the heading of ad baculum: (1) the scare tactics 
type of argument that does not contain a threat, but merely 
describes some scary outcome to influence a respondent; (2) the 
threat appeal type of argument, where the making of a threat by 
one party is used to present an argument designed to try to get 
another party to take some course of action; and (3) the use of 
force by one party to try to get the other party to take some 
course of action. This paper will be exclusively concerned with 
category (2) and, centrally, with a difficult type of instance of 
the threat appeal argument where the threat is put forward as an 
indirect speech act. 

The latest development in the analysis of the ad baculum 
fallacy is a recent paper (Budzynska and Witek, 2014) arguing 
that it is a deficiency of the standard model (Walton, 2000) that 
it is merely an inferential model involving premises and 
conclusions that fails to capture the basic rhetorical technique of 
this fallacy, which needs to be based on speech acts. Budzynska 
and Witek (2014, section 3.3) show that the communicative and 
cognitive tactic deployed in the ad baculum argument is an 
application of a speech act that has two parts. The directive part 
of the ad baculum speech act has the use of placing an 
obligation on the respondent to carry out the action that is the 
conclusion of the argument. The use of the commissive part of 
the argument is to indicate the proponent’s so-called “status 
function”. The notion of the status function derives from the 
analysis of speech acts in (Searle, 1969). This function contains 
the proponent’s power to give the respondent binding orders 
with respect to an action to be carried out. The proponent tells 
the respondent that he or she should bring about a particular 
action that is being recommended by the proponent. Using this 
function, the proponent has the power to make binding directive 
acts that apply to the respondent in an exchange between the 
two parties.  
 
 
3. Two examples  
 
We begin with what appears to be a very simple case from 
artificial intelligence. Kraus, Sycara and Evenchik (1998) have 
built a computational argumentation model in which agents in a 



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multi-agent system can use argumentation as a mechanism for 
achieving cooperation and agreement. In their system, agents 
plan and act together using practical reasoning to resolve 
conflicts, and one of the ways they resolve conflicts is to 
negotiate with each other. Quoted below (Kraus, Sycara and 
Evenchik, 1998) is their leading example used to illustrate in a 
simple case how two agents might interact in a standard 
sequence of argumentation. 
 

“For example, imagine two mobile robots on Mars, each built 
to maximize its own utility. R1 requests R2 to dig for a certain 
mineral. R2 refuses. R1 responds with a threat: “if you do not 
dig for me, I will break your antenna”. R2 is faced with the 
task of evaluating this threat. Several considerations must be 
taken into account, such as whether or not the threat is 
bounded, what R1’s credibility is, how important it is for R2 to 
have its antenna intact, so on and so forth. R1 may take a 
different approach if R2 refuses to dig, and respond with a 
promise for a reward: “if you dig for me today, I will help you 
move your equipment tomorrow”. Here, R2 needs to evaluate 
the promise of future reward.” 

 
In light of the traditional treatments of the ad baculum fallacy in 
logic, this example is interesting for several reasons, based on 
the way the example is presented. The first reason is that even 
though R1 has put forward an argument that takes the form of a 
threat, it seems to be assumed by the way the example is 
presented that the argument is not inherently fallacious. When 
faced with the task of evaluating the threat, R2 is said to have 
several considerations that must be taken into account. These 
remarks suggest that the threat argument may not be entirely 
unreasonable, and that it can be responded to appropriately by 
the asking of critical questions that provide the basis for judging 
how to respond to the threat. 

Also, it is said in the example that each of the robotic agents 
is built to maximize its own utility. This implies that both robots 
are programmed with goals, and are autonomous agents that can 
use practical reasoning to seek actions that are means to carry 
out these goals. To see how R2 might use this kind of reasoning 
to figure out what to do, examine the argument diagram in 
figure 1. In its simplest form, an argument diagram, or argument 
map as it is often called, is composed of two elements, a set of 
propositions representing premises or conclusions of arguments, 
and a set of arrows representing inferences from some 
propositions to others. For this reason an argument map is often 
called a box and arrow diagram, a visual representation of an 
argument formed by drawing arrows leading from text boxes to 



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other text boxes. An argument diagram takes the form of a tree 
structure in which there is a single proposition representing the 
ultimate claim or thesis to be proved at the root of the tree. All 
the other propositions are premises or conclusions that lead 
along branches of the tree to this root proposition.  

An argument diagram can easily be made using pencil and 
paper, but nowadays there are many argument visualization 
tools that can be used to assist in drawing an argument diagram 
that can be saved and later modified. Such argument mapping 
tools have now become centrally important argumentation 
methods in their own right, as they can perform different 
functions that are helpful for clarifying, analyzing, summarizing 
and evaluating arguments. There are now over sixty 
computational argument mapping systems  (Scheuer et al., 
2010) that can be used to summarize or analyze argumentation 
in a visual format on a computer screen for various purposes. 
The style of diagrams adopted in this paper is that of the 
Carneades Argumentation System (CAS). The Carneades editor 
(version 1.0.2), a visualization tool for CAS, can be accessed at 
http://carneades.github.com. CAS is an Open Source software 
(permits users to change it) project, which has the goal of 
developing tools for supporting a variety of argumentation tasks, 
including argument mapping and argument evaluation, by 
applying proof standards and the notion of an audience (Gordon, 
2010). Carneades formalizes argument graphs as bipartite 
directed graphs, consisting of argument nodes linked to 
statement nodes.  In CAS argument maps, statement nodes are 
represented as text boxes that contain propositions. Argument 
nodes are represented as circles using a + or – sign inside the 
circle to denote pro and con arguments.  

Carneades treats a convergent argument as two separate 
arguments by showing the convergent argument as displaying 
two or more arguments, each indicated by a circle node, each 
leading separately to the same conclusion. A linked argument is 
drawn by showing two or more premises leading to the same 
argument node that then goes by a line with an arrowhead 
leading to the conclusion. Two linked arguments are shown in 
figure 1. The statement nodes are the rectangular boxes. The 
argument nodes are the two circles containing the plus signs. 
The two premises, in each instance, are the statements in the text 
boxes to the right of the circle node representing the argument.  

 
 



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Figure 1: R2’s Reasoning in Response to R1’s Threat. 
 
In figure 1, let’s say that an agent’s goal is represented by the 
statement ‘It is important for me ….’. Then the argument at the 
left can be seen as instance of practical reasoning. The argument 
at the top, let’s say, can be represented as an argument from 
threat. So what’s wrong with the threat argument shown in 
figure 1? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with it, from R2’s point 
of view. If R2 has nothing better to do at that time anyway, but it 
is important for him to preserve his antenna for future use in the 
mission, maybe it would make practical sense for it to dig. The 
upshot of our observations in this example is that it might be 
very unwise to assume that ad baculum arguments are 
fallacious, by adopting the theory that making any kind of threat 
in argumentation should automatically be classified as an 
unreasonable or fallacious form of argument. 

Also, it is said that depending on how R2 responds to R1’s 
argument, R1 may take a different approach and put forward a 
follow-up argument that offers a reward to R2. Offering a reward 
is a typical instance of practical reasoning that proceeds by 
offering an incentive to the party to whom the argument was 
directed to try to get the party to carry out a particular action. So 
if offering a reward is not fallacious, why is it that we seem to 
jump much more easily to the conclusion that making a threat is 
generally a fallacious form of argument?  

Next let’s move on to consider an example that introduces 
some additional complications. The following case is typical of 
the kind of example used by the logic textbooks to illustrate 
cases of an ad baculum fallacy based on a threat (Walton, 2000, 
123). 
 

A known gangster says to the owner of a small business: 
“You should pay us protection money, because this is a 
very dangerous neighborhood. The last guy who didn’t 
pay had his store looted and destroyed, right after he 
failed to pay”. 

 



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Threats can be nasty, dangerous, impolite, scary, unpleasant, 
irrelevant, and even illegal in some instances. Hence it is easy to 
jump to the conclusion that the ad baculum argument used in 
this case as fallacious. But it is harder to try to pin down a 
precise general way why an argument of this kind should be 
evaluated as fallacious. Making a threat is generally recognized 
as a legitimate tactic in negotiation, thus it is a relevant and 
important type of argument to be used in strategic maneuvering. 
For example in contract negotiations between union and 
management representatives, making a threat is commonly 
accepted as normal tactic in the strategic maneuvering carried 
out during the bargaining process by both sides. Of course, the 
making of a threat can be illegitimate or irrelevant in some 
instances, but the problem of pinning down exactly what these 
instances are is not as easy as it looks. 
 

 
 

Figure 2: First argument diagram of the gangster example 
 
The argument diagram shown in figure 2 represents the simplest 
analysis of the argumentation in the gangster example. There are 
two explicit premises and an explicit conclusion. No indication 
is given whether either of the arguments fits any known 
argumentation scheme. This argument diagram seems 
reasonable enough in representing the basic argumentation 
structure of the gangster example. The problem is that it is too 
superficial to reveal anything about the nature of the argument 
move. It doesn’t tell us much of anything, one way or the other, 
on whether the argument is a fallacious ad baculum or not.  

The upshot of our observations on these examples is that it 
might be very unwise to assume that ad baculum arguments are 
fallacious, by adopting the theory that making any kind of threat 
in argumentation should automatically be classified as an 
unreasonable or fallacious form of argument. To probe into the 
structure of the argument further we have to use some other 
tools.  
 
4. Practical reasoning and argument from consequences 
 
In the simplest and most basic kind of practical reasoning, a 
rational agent reasons from a goal, and an action that represents 
a means to reach the goal, to a conclusion that it should carry 
out that action. A rational agent is an entity that has goals, some 



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(though normally incomplete) knowledge of its circumstances, 
the capability of acting to alter these circumstances, and the 
capability to perceive (some of) the consequences of so acting. 
It also has the capability for feedback, meaning that it can 
change its conclusion on how to act and its goals as it gathers 
incoming knowledge about the consequences of its actions. The 
following scheme represents the basic form of practical 
reasoning.  In this scheme the first-person pronoun ‘I’ stands for 
a rational agent of this kind (Walton, 1996). 
 
     Goal Premise: I have a goal, G. 
     Means Premise: Carrying out this action A is a means to 

realize G. 
     Conclusion: I ought (practically speaking) to carry out this 

action A. 
 
Here the term ‘ought’ (or equivalently we could use the term 
‘should’) is interpreted as offering prudential reasoning for the 
wisdom of carrying out a designated action. Practical reasoning 
is a defeasible form of argumentation, meaning that its 
conclusion is subject to retraction when new information comes 
in, even though the original premises of the argument still hold. 
It can be defeated by the asking of critical questions or by the 
posing of relevant counterarguments. One of these critical 
questions concerns negative consequences, often called side 
effects, of carrying out the action in the conclusion. Practical 
reasoning can also be attacked by a counterargument that cites 
negative consequences of the action being contemplated by the 
practical reasoner, and argues that the negative value of these 
consequences outweighs the positive value of the goal the agent 
is trying to fulfill. There are two basic kinds of practical 
reasoning: instrumental practical reasoning and value-based 
practical reasoning. The former kind of practical reasoning is 
not concerned with values, but only with instrumental matters of 
maximizing utility. 

Practical reasoning was involved in the robots example. R2 
had to decide whether its best course of action was to follow 
R1’s request to dig, or whether it should risk having this antenna 
broken by R1. To make this decision R2 has to weigh whatever 
goals it might have that might be interfered with by spending 
time digging against the negative consequences of having its 
antenna broken, an outcome that might interfere with the goal of 
the mission. This kind of problem is typical of practical 
reasoning, where an action being contemplated by an agent 
might fulfill one goal but have negative consequences with 
respect to fulfilling another goal. 



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The argument in the gangster example is an instance of the 
argumentation scheme for argument from negative 
consequences. The connection between the ad baculum fallacy 
and argument from negative consequences has been noted by 
Tindale (2007, 109). The argumentation scheme for argument 
from negative consequences (NC)is presented below. 
 

Major Premise: If A is not brought about, then 
consequences C will occur. 
Minor Premise: Consequences C are bad. 
Conclusion: Therefore A should be brought about. 

 
In the gangster example, the gangster is telling the small 
business owner that if he doesn’t pay the protection money, his 
store will be looted and destroyed. This proposition fits the 
major premise of the argument from negative consequences. 
Both parties in the example accept the proposition that the 
consequences of having his store looted and destroyed are 
negative from the point of view of the small business owner. 
The conclusion follows, according to this scheme, that the small 
business owner should pay protection money.   

 
 

Figure 3: Argument from consequences in the  
gangster example 

 
Arguments fitting this scheme are known to be fallacious in 
some instances, but in the broad majority of cases they are very 
commonly used as reasonable arguments. One needs only to 
think of a typical example such as, “You ought not to take this 
drug, because it is known to have the following side effects, one 
of which in particular is very dangerous for you.” This type of 
example, which cites the negative consequences of the 
contemplated course of action as a reason for not undertaking an 
action, is an extremely common form of argument in everyday 
conversational argumentation, and is often quite reasonable. 

This way of reconstructing the argument is somewhat more 
helpful than the simple way represented in figure 3. However, it 
still doesn’t tell us much that is very useful in arriving at a 



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solution to the problem of whether the argumentation in the case 
constitutes a fallacious ad baculum or not. Since arguments 
from consequences are basically reasonable, or at least do not 
commit the ad baculum fallacy in their predominant uses, we 
still don’t have much to go on by way of using this structure to 
devise criteria that will enable us to determine in a particular 
case whether an argument using a threat is fallacious or not. To 
get a bit further with this task, it is necessary to probe more 
deeply into the argument structure of the example.  
 
 
5. Argument from threat 
 
The next tool we need, in addition to the definition of the speech 
act of making a threat, is the argumentation scheme for 
argument from threat (Walton Reed and Macagno, 2008, 333). 
The scheme is presented here in slightly modified form with 
three premises. The speaker is an agent represented by the first-
person pronoun ‘I’. The hearer is another agent, represented by 
the pronoun ‘you’.  
 

Premise 1: If you do not bring about A, some cited bad 
consequences, B, will follow. 
Premise 2: I am in position to bring about B. 
Premise 3: I hereby assert that I will see to it that B 
occurs if you do not bring about A. 
Conclusion: You had better bring about A. 

 
This argument is precisely the one used in the robots example. 
Both premises 1 and 3 are explicit in the example, and it may be 
presumed from the circumstances described in the case that 
premise 2 also applies. But more work is required to see how it 
fits to the gangster example. 

Figure 4 represents a fuller analysis of how the 
argumentation in the gangster example contains the making of a 
threat by inserting five implicit premises. 

An explicit premise is shown in a text box that has the form 
of a normal rectangle. An implicit premise is shown in a text 
box that is rectangular but where the perimeter of the rectangle 
is a dashed (dotted) line. The notation +AT in an argument node 
represents a pro argument from threat. The reader should check 
to see that the three premises in this argument fit the format 
required by the scheme for argument from threat above. The 
notation +AN in an argument node represents the scheme for 
argument from analogy.  The other two argument nodes are not 
associated with any specific argumentation scheme, and are 



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merely represented as pro-arguments, as indicated by the plus 
sign. 

 

 
 

Figure 4: Complex argument diagram of the gangster example 
with implicit premises 

 
Notice that all three premises in the argument from threat 

shown in figure 4 are marked as implicit premises. None of 
them is explicitly stated in the text of the gangster example. This 
observation by itself should suggest that there is something 
unusual about the example. Clearly the gangster is making a 
threat to the store owner, but he has not explicitly stated any of 
the premises in the argument from threat. When we try to 
represent the argument diagrammatically to reveal a little more 
structure, we need to figure out where the two explicitly stated 
premises should be fitted in. In figure 4 they are shown at the 
top right. One is the statement that the last guy who didn’t pay 
had his store looted and destroyed, right after he failed to pay. 
This premise is joined together with an implicit premise stating 
a similarity to the present case. These two premises are taken to 
be parts of an argument from analogy, indicated by the AN in 
the argument circle. It is taken to be a pro-argument supporting 
the implicit conclusion saying that if the store owner doesn’t pay 
protection money, his store will be looted and destroyed. 

The next question about this figure is whether there is any 
evidence either explicitly or implicitly present in the case that 
supports the implicit premise that the gangster is in a position to 
bring about the bad consequences of the store being looted and 
destroyed. There is implicit evidence, because the store owner is 
aware that the person he is talking to is a gangster. It can be 
assumed that he knows about gangsters, and that gangsters are 
quite capable of bringing about death and destruction in order to 
achieve their ends. To indicate this implicit evidence on the 



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argument diagram in figure 4, an implicit premise containing the 
statement ‘I am a gangster’ has been shown as part of a pro 
argument supporting the conclusion that the speaker is in a 
position to bring about the bad consequences. Once again here 
we see that this part of the argument is purely implicit. None of 
it has been explicitly stated by the gangster.   

Now we come to the final point to be discussed. There is 
one explicit premise of the argument remaining to be dealt with, 
the statement that this is a very dangerous neighborhood. The 
problem is how to fit this premise into the argument diagram 
somewhere. The initial attempt to do that is shown in figure 4, 
where this statement is represented as a premise in an argument 
supporting the implicit conclusion that if you don’t pay 
protection money, your store will be looted and destroyed. 
Viewed in this way the statement is taken to go along with the 
explicit premise just below it as an additional argument 
supporting this conclusion. The statement ‘This is a very 
dangerous neighborhood’ gives the store owner some reason to 
accept the proposition that if he doesn’t pay protection money, 
his store will be looted and destroyed.  

Notice, however, that this way of representing this part of 
the argument does not seem quite right. If the store owner 
already knows that the person confronting him is a gangster, and 
knows that this man has just stated that the last guy who didn’t 
pay had his store looted and destroyed, right after he failed to 
pay, he already knows that the gangster is convincingly telling 
him that if he doesn’t pay protection money, his store will be 
looted and destroyed. The additional statement that this is a very 
dangerous neighborhood adds nothing in the way of significant 
evidential support. Something else is going on. The question is: 
can we get at what else is going on by building a deeper analysis 
of the argumentation in the case that goes beyond the inadequate 
argument structures displayed in figures 2, 3 and 4?  

To answer this question it is necessary to examine the 
function of the statement ‘This is a very dangerous 
neighborhood’ in the gangster’s argumentation strategy. It 
appears that the gangster is trying to create a superficial 
appearance of giving the store owner advice, by warning him of 
some bad thing that might happen or advising him on how to 
avoid it, while in reality he is making a nasty threat. To explore 
the basis of this distinction we have to go to the next level, 
which goes beyond logic (narrowly construed) to speech act 
theory. 
 
 
 



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6. Speech acts  
 
Budzynska and Witek (2014) have shown that speech acts are 
vitally important for analyzing the ad baculum fallacy, and that 
it is necessary to bring speech acts to bear on this fallacy to 
explain its dynamics. The next part of this paper will provide 
additional evidence to support their approach by demonstrating 
the importance of speech acts for the analysis of both reasonable 
and fallacious arguments based on threats.  
     A speech act is conventionally made up of four components 
(Searle, 1969):  
(1) the two parties involved, called the speaker and hearer,  
(2) the propositional content of what was said by the speaker,  
(3) the illocutionary act, the intended meaning of the speaker’s 
utterance, and 
(4) the perlocutionary act, the action resulting from the locution.  
There is the possibility of ambiguity in this framework, in that 
the speech act intended by the speaker can be construed in more 
than one way. For example, in the gangster case, what he says 
could be taken as a warning or a threat, even though the 
evidence that was meant as a threat is quite convincing.  

The speech act of warning has the following four conditions 
(Searle, 1969, 67). The version presented below has been 
modified from Searle’s original account to fit in with subsequent 
developments in argumentation theory. 
 

Propositional Content Condition: The propositional 
content of the speech act poses some future event that 
may affect the hearer.  
Preparatory Condition:  The speaker has reason to 
believe that this event will be against the interests of the 
hearer.  
Sincerity Condition: The speaker believes that the hearer 
will benefit from knowing in advance that this event may 
occur.  
Essential Condition: the action of telling the hearer about 
the event is taken to offer to the hearer a way of avoiding 
its coming about or affecting him. 
 

The propositional content condition postulates some event that 
might come about and affect the interests of the hearer. The  
preparatory condition requires that the coming about of this 
event will be against the interests of  the hearer. The sincerity 
condition requires that it is in the hearer’s interest from learning 
about the event before it happens. The essential condition is that 
there is something the hearer can do about it. 



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Another type of speech act is the speech act of advising 
(Searle, 1969, 67) . 
  

Propositional Content Condition: The propositional 
content of the speech act describes some future problem 
or choice the hearer is confronting.  
Preparatory Condition:  The speaker has reason to 
believe that choosing one way or another can affect the 
interests of the hearer.  
Sincerity Condition: The speaker believes that the hearer 
will benefit from knowing in advance about means to 
solve the problem or make the best choice.  
Essential Condition: The action of telling the hearer how 
to proceed is taken to offer to the hearer a way to solve 
the problem or make the best choice. 
 

By comparing the two sets of requirements it can be seen how 
the speech act of warning is different from the speech act of 
advising. Kauffeld (2000) has offered an analysis of the speech 
act of advising by contrasting it with the speech act of putting 
forward a proposal. On his analysis, performing the speech act 
of proposing carries with it a burden of proof to defend the 
proposal if challenged to do so, whereas performing the speech 
act of advising carries no such burden. 

According to the analysis of the speech act of making a 
threat given in (Walton, 2000, 127), the speech acts of giving a 
warning and making a threat are closely connected. What is 
important in this analysis is not only the verbal formulae used to 
make the threat, but attention has to be paid to pragmatic 
features of the context of dialogue in which the speech act has 
been put forward as a locution. As noted above, the hearer needs 
to draw the conclusion that the arguer is making a threat by 
implicature from the conversational maxims appropriate for the 
context of dialogue. According to the definition of the speech 
act of making a threat given in (Walton 2000, 113) there are 
four speech act conditions that have to be met.  
 

Propositional Content Condition: The hearer has to have 
reasons to believe that the speaker can bring about the 
negative consequences in question.  
Preparatory Condition: It is presumed by both the 
speaker and hearer that the negative consequences will 
not occur without the intervention of the speaker. 
Sincerity Condition: The negative consequences will not 
be in the hearer’s interests and the hearer would want to 
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Essential Condition: The speaker is making a 
commitment to see to it that the bad consequences occur 
unless the hearer carries out the action recommended by 
the speaker.  

 
The essential difference between the speech act of giving a 
warning and the speech act of making a threat is the existence of 
the essential condition. This requirement is characteristic of the 
speech act of making a threat, and is characteristically absent 
when the speech act of giving a warning is made. Unless the 
essential condition is present in a given case, the speech act 
needs to be classified as a warning, and not a threat.  

Is what the gangster said a warning or a threat? And how 
can it be proved that it fits into one category or the other? It 
seems that the significant feature of the case, from the point of 
view of the ad baculum fallacy, is that on the surface, what the 
gangster said appears to have the form of a warning. But what 
makes it inviting to classify the example as an instance of the ad 
baculum fallacy is that the text can also obviously be taken as 
expressing a threat—a  threat that would be very scary to the 
store owner—and also might be highly effective in encouraging 
him to pay the protection money. To find an argumentation 
method that can be used to capture this ambiguity of expression, 
and utilize it in an objective way to gather evidence to evaluate 
whether the argument is fallacious or not, we need to go beyond 
the inferential structures represented in the three argument 
diagrams above. We need to consider the context of discourse. 
To do this it is necessary to make the ascent to a third level, the 
dialectical level. 
 
 
7. Indirect speech acts 
 
The standard example given to illustrate an indirect speech act is 
the question, ‘Can you pass the salt?’ In normal conversational 
practice this question is not given the literal interpretation, 
asking the respondent whether she is in a position to pass the 
salt. It is a polite request to pass the salt by avoiding the 
somewhat impolite locution ‘Pass the salt!’ which might appear 
to be giving a direct order. Indirect speech acts are often used to 
reject proposals. Consider the following dialogue exchange.  
 
Bob: Would you like to go for a walk? 
Alice: I have a doctor’s appointment. 
 



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Alice’s statement that she has a doctor’s appointment does not 
logically imply rejection of Bob’s proposal that they should go 
for a walk. Hence it is classified as an indirect speech act. But 
how do we get by inference from Alice’s statement that she has 
a doctor’s appointment to the conclusion that she is rejecting 
Bob’s proposal that they should go for a walk? We could insert 
the missing premise that since Alice has a doctor’s appointment 
this leaves no time for her to go for a walk. But this explanation 
by itself does not seem very satisfactory. 

According to Searle’s theory of indirect speech acts, the 
speaker communicates more than what is explicitly said by 
relying on common knowledge shared by the speaker and 
hearer, along with powers of rationality and inference that the 
speaker presumes that the hearer shares (Searle, 1969). 
According to Searle’s program to build a theory that might help 
to explain indirect speech acts, the suggestion is made to think 
of a conversation as an exchange between participants that 
assumes cooperation and relevance on the part of the 
participants (Levinson, 1983). This theory needs to assume 
some more generalized framework of a systematic conversation 
between parties that follows rules of some sort. The Gricean 
theory of conversational implicature explains indirect speech 
acts by framing them in conversational postulates that Grice 
called maxims (Grice, 1975). Grice offers conversational rules, 
but does not specify how these rules differ in different kinds of 
conversational interactions. Nor does he provide a structure that 
postulates the purpose of a particular type of dialogue, and the 
kinds of speech acts that function as moves in the dialogue. Nor 
does he give any indication of systematic criteria enabling a 
party outside the dialogue to determine whether the dialogue has 
been successful or not. 

Since the advent of argumentation theory, these 
conversational maxims are associated with rules of dialogue, 
making up a system of rules called protocols in the artificial 
intelligence literature. Each speech act in the dialogue has 
protocols that impose conditions on the putting forward of the 
speech act by one party at any particular point in the dialogue, 
and protocols that impose conditions on the range of responses 
that the other party is allowed to make. Many formal and 
computational dialogue systems have now also been built in the 
artificial intelligence literature to represent standard types of 
communication frameworks (McBurney and Parsons, 2002). 
Formal systems of persuasion dialogue, information seeking 
dialogue, inquiry dialogue, deliberation dialogue and negotiation 
dialogue are now available. Reed (2011) has presented a formal 
and computational model of argumentation in which speech acts 



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function as the glue between utterances that form a dialogue 
structure. In these formal systems the speech acts are the 
locutions (such as making an assertion) that can be made at each 
move of a dialogue.  

To deal with the ad baculum fallacy apparently committed 
in the gangster example, it is necessary to identify some features 
illustrated by the argumentation in this example. We know that 
the gangster is making a threat to the store owner, but at the 
same time what he purports to be doing is merely advising the 
store owner on how to avoid danger. We hypothesize that the 
gangster is arguing in this way in order to avoid the 
responsibility for having made a threat. His modus operandi for 
implementing a strategic maneuver to this end is to mask his 
conversation as an instance of innocent advice-giving. What is 
invoked is pretense of a framework of advising to mask the 
inappropriateness of making a threat. To model this strategic 
maneuver, merely thinking of advising as a type of speech act is 
too narrow. It is much more advantageous to think of advising 
as a type of dialogue in its own right. But to my knowledge, 
advising has not been previously defined as normative type of 
dialogue in its own right in the argumentation literature. Some 
work needs to be done to specify the characteristics of this type 
of dialogue. 
 
 
8. Advising dialogue 
 
In the simplest case, advising dialogue has two parties. In formal 
dialogue models, one party is usually called the proponent and 
the other the respondent. We will call the proponent the advisor 
and the respondent the advice receiver. The proponent’s goal is 
to offer advice to the respondent, and the respondent’s goal is to 
benefit from this advice. The respondent needs to consider the 
advice, and ultimately to accept or reject it. In a normative 
model of dialogue, the respondent should only accept the advice 
if it is good advice. The purpose of the dialogue as a whole is to 
help the proponent with his attempt to make a decision on what 
to do in a situation that requires choice, on the problem he 
confronts. Hence advising dialogue is typically embedded in a 
larger structure of deliberation dialogue where a single agent or 
group of agents is trying to solve a problem or decide what to do 
in circumstances requiring a choice of actions.  

Advising dialogue is similar to persuasion dialogue in some 
respects, but it is not the same thing. In persuasion dialogue, 
there is a difference of opinions that needs to be resolved. The 
one party accepts that a certain proposition is true, while the 



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other party is of the opinion that this proposition is false, or at 
least has doubts that it can be proved to be true. In advising 
dialogue, one party confronts a problem or choice of actions and 
relies on the other party to furnish relevant information as an aid 
in making a good decision based on adequate evidence. 
Advising dialogue definitely fits the form of argumentation, 
because the advice given takes the form of pro and contra 
arguments, arguments that support or attack the 
recommendation given by the advisor, displaying the evidence 
on both sides of the decision for the receiver to consider. 
  An example displaying this feature of advice-giving is the 
evaluation of the Chrysler 200 family sedan given in (Consumer 
Reports (Canada), April 2013, 47). 
 

“The 200 is an outdated design that is uncompetitive among 
family sedans. On the plus side, the ride is compliant and the 
optional V6 is strong and smooth. The noisy and unrefined 
four-cylinder gets only 21 miles per gallon overall, the same 
as the 283-hp V6. The six-speed automatic doesn’t shift 
particularly smoothly or quickly. Though the soft suspension 
provides decent isolation, it also allows frequent body 
motions, and handling lacks agility. Most controls are 
straightforward. Reliability has dropped to below average.” 

 
The practice of Consumer Reports is to indicate along with the 
evaluation whether the car being described fits into their 
recommended category or not. In the case of this evaluation, 
there was no checkmark given indicating that this car is 
recommended. This notation essentially means that the car is not 
being recommended. Consumer Reports specifies criteria for 
being recommended, including such matters as whether the 
vehicle passed safety tests, whether it has proved to be reliable, 
how high the costs of repair have been, and so forth. 

In this case we can clearly see that argumentation is 
involved. The pro arguments are listed along with the con 
arguments so that the reader can make an informed decision. In 
table 1 the set of arguments is classified into pro and con. There 
are four pro arguments and eight con arguments. 

 
 
PRO CON 
The ride is compliant. The 200 is an outdated design  
The optional V6 is strong and 
smooth. 

The 200 is uncompetitive 
among family sedans. 

The soft suspension provides 
decent isolation. 

The four-cylinder is noisy. 



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Most controls are 
straightforward. 

The four-cylinder is unrefined. 

 The four-cylinder gets only 21 
miles per gallon. 

 The suspension allows 
frequent body motions. 

 Handling lacks agility. 
 Reliability has dropped to 

below average. 
 
 

Table 1: Argument pro and con for the Chrysler 200 
 
It is not just the number of the arguments, however, that is 
significant. What is significant is that the information about the 
car’s property and performance, based on testing it, is made 
available to the consumer who is considering buying a vehicle. 
We can look over the pro and con arguments and decide which 
ones are more important or less important for arriving at a 
decision. We can weigh them in with other considerations that 
are important for her. For example, she might have test-driven 
this car or others, and she might have special requirements, 
depending on the uses she has for the car, or she may want 
special features that are really important to her such as all-wheel 
drive. Price will also be a factor for most buyers. Also 
significant in the advice given is the decision of Consumer 
Reports not to put the Chrysler 200 in the recommended 
category. For example, some buyers might only consider 
vehicles in the ‘recommended’ category. 

To deal with this kind of case more effectively, merely 
thinking of advising as a type of speech act is too narrow. An 
alternative would be to think of advising as representing a 
continuous type of discourse containing argumentation. In the 
argumentation literature, seven basic types of dialogue are 
recognized: persuasion dialogue, deliberation dialogue, inquiry 
dialogue, information-seeking dialogue, discovery dialogue, 
negotiation dialogue, and eristic dialogue. It may be useful to 
see advising dialogue as a distinctive type of dialogue in its own 
right that is often embedded within these other types of 
dialogue. It is especially characteristic that there is an 
embedding of advising dialogue into deliberation dialogue. 
When an agent is deliberating on how to solve a problem or 
what course of action to choose, it may be useful for her to 
consult with another party who is not a participant in the 
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This kind of situation is very common when experts are 
consulted for example. 

An example of this type of advising dialogue can be found 
in an article meant to help someone shopping for a new car to 
select an in-car electronics system (Connect with Your Car: 
How to Plug-in Your Music, Apps, and Lifestyle, Consumer 
Reports, April 2013, 18-20, no author given). In the quoted 
segment below the author offers some advice to help the reader 
check for some features worth considering. 
 

“When comparing cars, check that the location of the inputs 
works for you. They’re typically found in the dash, center 
console, or glove box. The latter two let you keep your device 
out of sight but may not work as well if you mount your 
phone in a windshield or dash mount for navigation or hands-
free phone calls.” 

 
When you buy a new car you will see that the inputs for your 
electronic devices may be found in one of three places, the dash, 
the center console, or the glove box. But the author of the article 
offers practical advice. If the inputs are located in the center 
console or the glove box, the good consequence of this location 
is that they will be out of sight. However the bad consequence is 
also noted that they may not work as well for navigation or 
hands-free phone calls in this enclosed location. This bit of 
practical reasoning can be passed on to the reader because the 
testers of these cars encountered this practical problem when 
they used the electronic in-car technology themselves. Not just 
this particular example, but much of the writing in Consumer 
Reports, can nicely be classified as representing advising 
dialogue. 

Advising dialogue has, in the simplest case, two 
participants, the advisor and the advice seeker. In the opening 
stage, the advice seeker poses a problem and asks for help in 
solving it. The question is more than merely a request for 
information. It may involve the giving of information, but it is 
more of a practical request for help on how to proceed in a 
situation where the advice seeker needs help and the advisor is 
in a position to provide that help. In advising dialogue, the 
advice seeker opens the dialogue by posing a problem and 
explaining to the advisor how he is trying to solve this problem. 
The advice seeker formulates the problem using the 
argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. For example, he 
might tell the advisor that he has a goal that he wishes to carry 
out, and the problem is that he cannot find the best means to 
carry out the goal. Therefore he wishes to consult the advisor to 



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see if she can suggest a way to resolve this problem. These 
transactions between the two parties occur during the opening 
stage. 

During the argumentation stage—which will generally 
contain arguments, presenting information, explanations, 
warnings, and other speech acts—the advisor continuously 
provides the kind of help requested. During this stage the advice 
seeker ask questions about things he does not understand, or 
other questions relating to the practical reasoning given in the 
advice. During the argumentation stage the advisor offers advice 
and the advice seeker asks for explanations and further 
information about the advice offered so that he can fully 
understand the means he needs to take in order to solve the 
problem. As part of the argumentation stage the advice seeker 
may criticize the plan of action proposed by the advisor, by 
indicating parts in the plan that he thinks might not work or that 
appear to be questionable. A plan of action is a sequence of 
actions and events (Russell and Norvig, 1995, 56) linking goals 
to actions that are means to achieve the goal or contribute to 
achieving it. 

Once the advice given is sufficient to solve the problem 
expressed at the opening stage, or otherwise if the discussion 
has reached the point where no further help can be given, the 
dialogue reaches its closing stage. The closing stage is reached 
either if the advisor is satisfied that the advice given to him has 
been shown to him to be the best way to solve this problem, or if 
the advisor has tried her best to answer all the questions of the 
advice seeker, but he is still not convinced that the plan she has 
recommended is the best means to carry out the goal that he 
wishes to achieve. In that sense the advice seeking dialogue has 
not been successful in presenting the advice seeker with a 
solution to this problem. But it could still be successful in 
another way if it presented enough information about alternative 
means of working toward solving the problem so that it helped 
the advice seeker to move forward by seeking further advice 
from other sources. Indeed it may well be that the advice seeker 
has to discuss this problem with a number of advisors so that he 
can compare their recommendations on the best course of 
action, evaluate their advice, and either pick out the best action 
plan or combine the action plans to build a better one that might 
fulfill the goal the advice seeker wants to achieve. 
 
 
 
 



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9. Dialectical analysis of the ad baculum arguments in the 
examples 
 
An interesting aspect of the robots case as presented is that 
negotiation is involved in the model of argumentation, 
suggesting the scenario that in multi-agent reasoning if two 
agents are deliberating on what to do in a given case, it might be 
quite reasonable for one of them to try to negotiate with the 
other in order to move their joint deliberations forward. Parsons 
and Jennings (1997, 267) offered the classic case of two agents 
engaged in a deliberation dialogue on how to hang a picture. 
Using practical reasoning they come to the conclusion they need 
a hammer, and a nail. Their joint goal is to hang the picture and 
they agree that a means of hanging the picture is to use a nail. 
They also know that they need a hammer to put the nail in the 
wall in order to hang the picture. Let’s say also that one knows 
where a hammer can be located while the other knows where to 
get a nail. Following the example further, let’s suppose that they 
start to negotiate on who will provide the hammer and who will 
provide the nail. Notice what has happened. They started out 
engaging in a deliberation dialogue on how to hang the picture, 
but then at some point the discussion shifted to a negotiation 
dialogue. 

Also it might appear to be a reasonable hypothesis that 
whether the making of a threat in an argument should be 
evaluated as a fallacious ad baculum or not depends on the 
framework of multi-agent dialogue that the argument is 
supposed to be part of. In the robots example, each of the two 
robots is built to maximize its own utility, but they need to 
communicate in order to pass along information about the 
circumstances to each other in order to carry out the tasks 
required by each to fulfill the mission. When the one threatens 
the other, presumably they are engaged in a deliberation 
dialogue using practical reasoning to carry out their individual 
goals, and the goal of the mission generally. If there is some 
problem about which one should carry out a particular task 
needed to move towards these goals, they may need to negotiate. 
If a shift of this sort occurs, and during the negotiation interval 
one makes a threat to the other by using ad baculum argument, 
this argument is not necessarily fallacious. The reason is that 
making threats is normal in negotiation dialogue (Walton, 
2000). For example, in union management negotiation 
dialogues, it is common for the union to threaten to go on strike 
or to go on some sort of job action that might harm the 
company’s interests.  



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On the other hand, we can imagine circumstances in which 
the shift from the one type of dialogue to the other could be 
evidence of committing an ad baculum fallacy by the party who 
made a threat. For example, suppose the two robots are engaged 
in a delicate problem of fixing a short circuit in some of their 
equipment, and failure to solve the problem could easily result 
in failure of the mission. Moreover, suppose that there is limited 
time to solve the problem because several other important jobs 
also need to be done before liftoff. If the one robot starts making 
threats and quarreling or negotiating with the other robot at this 
time, and this interferes with the goals of the deliberation 
dialogue, and indeed with the goals of the mission as a whole, 
then the ad baculum argument could certainly be seen as 
inappropriate in the setting of deliberation dialogue that is 
underway. For this reason, the argument could be evaluated as 
an improper or even fallacious use of a threat. However, the 
robot example is quite simple. That is the nice part of it from the 
point of view of studying the ad baculum argument. Even 
though it is an ad baculum argument, for all we know, from the 
details of the example given, it is a non-fallacious use of this 
type of argument. However, as indicated, we could think of 
some hypothetical circumstances in which it would be a 
fallacious argument. 

The problem with the gangster example that prevented us 
from giving an adequate analysis using the argument diagram in 
figure 4 that would explain the ad baculum fallacy presumably 
committed in this case, concerns the gangster’s statement that 
this is a very dangerous neighborhood. The problem was how to 
fit it into the argument diagram shown in figure 4. In figures 2, 3 
and 4 it was shown as a pro-argument supporting the implicit 
premise stating that if you don’t pay protection money, your 
store will be looted and destroyed. It could also have been 
repositioned as a premise directly supporting the ultimate 
conclusion stating that you should pay protection money. 
However, both of these ways of fitting this statement into the 
network of argumentation in the case seemed to be inadequate. 
As indicated in section 5, it seemed that something else was 
going on. The problem posed is one of how we can build a 
deeper analysis of the argumentation in the case that goes 
beyond the structures displayed in figures 2, 3, and 4. 

We can see how the speech acts of warning, advising and 
threatening each have their individual components by reviewing 
the argument diagrams of figures 2, 3 and 4. Figure 2 represents 
the components of the speech act of warning. The main part of 
the act of warning is composed of the two statements explicitly 
made by the gangster, (1) this is a very dangerous neighborhood, 



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and (2) the last guy who didn’t pay had his store looted and 
destroyed, right after he failed to pay. Basically, the gangster is 
warning the storeowner that something bad is about to happen to 
him, without specifying exactly what the bad event is. However, 
some indication of what it is like is given in statement (2). 
Optionally, the conclusion that the store owner should pay the 
protection money can be included as part of the warning. But the 
essential part of the warning is the gangster’s telling the store 
owner that something is about to happen that is highly negative 
from the store owner’s point of view. 

The components of the speech act of advising can be seen 
displayed in figure 3. Here the gangster is not only saying that 
this is a very dangerous neighborhood, and that the last guy who 
didn’t pay his protection money had his store looted and 
destroyed. He is also offering a solution to the problem posed by 
the warning. He is advising the storeowner that if he doesn’t pay 
protection money his store will be looted and destroyed, and in 
order for the storeowner to avoid these negative consequences, 
he is advising him to pay protection money. Therefore the 
argumentation structure represented in figure 3, taken as a 
whole, displays the speech act of advising. Figure 3 includes 
both warning and advising, and shows how the warning speech 
act is included within the advising speech act as part of it. 

Figure 4 displays the speech act of making a threat in the 
central part of the diagram where the three propositions 
displayed in the rectangles with dashed borders are lined up 
vertically with each other. Notice that all the components of the 
threat are based on implicit assertions attributed to the gangster 
by implicature. Notice that in figure 4, the warning component 
is still present in the two propositions shown as explicit 
premises at the top right. So we can see how warning is 
connected with threatening by looking at these diagrams. But 
the problem remains to determine the precise relationship in the 
example between advising and threatening. The solution to this 
problem can be provided by mapping the relationships between 
the speech acts and the arguments, as shown in figure 5.  
     Figure 5 shows the speech act of warning at the top right of 
the diagram. Comprising this speech act are the gangster’s two 
explicit statements. The gangster’s asserting of these two 
statements, considered in isolation from the other parts of the 
argumentation represented in figure 5, can be taken as 
representing a warning that is part of an advising dialogue. 
 



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302 

 
 

Figure 5: Map of the relationships between the speech acts  
and the arguments 

 
The two statements that are components of the speech act of 
warning can be taken as representing an argument in an advising 
dialogue where the gangster is simply advising the storeowner 
that he should pay the protection money. The other part of the 
structure is the speech act of making a threat, represented by the 
three implicit statements in the big rectangle in the middle of 
figure 5. This part of the structure has already been shown in 
figure 5 to make up the implicit premises for an argument from 
threat that also leads to the conclusion that the store owner 
should pay the protection money. But now we can see that one 
of the implicit premises, the statement that if you don’t pay 
protection money, your store will be looted and destroyed, is 
also part of the advising dialogue that goes along with the other 
two statements shown in the rectangle representing the speech 
act of warning. 

What this shows is that we can take the argumentation in 
the case two different ways, and we can see how to do this once 
we separate the argumentation into its speech act components, 
the speech act of making a threat and speech act of warning. 
Then we can see how each of these speech acts contributes both 
to the advising dialogue and to the ultimate conclusion that the 
store owner should pay protection money. This way of framing 
the relationships between the speech act of making a threat and 
the speech act of warning shows the relationship of both 
components to the dialogue of advising and also to the argument 
from threat. It also shows how these components feed into the 



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ultimate conclusion. This structure solves the problem of 
explaining how the ad baculum fallacy works. 
 
 
10. Pretending to advise 
 
Now that we have a speech act of advising, and even more 
usefully a type of dialogue representing advising discourse, we 
are in a position to get a deeper analysis of the argumentation in 
the case. The reason that the gangster says that this is a very 
dangerous neighborhood is that he is pretending to advise the 
store owner. He is pretending to advise the store owner on what 
to do, by warning him about the potential negative consequences 
of not taking the course of action he advises. 

This move can be seen as part of a strategic maneuvering 
tactic for the gangster to distance himself from having made an 
explicit threat to the store owner. What the gangster is 
pretending to do is shown in the argument diagram in figure 1. 
All the gangster explicitly says is that the store owner should 
pay protection money because this is a very dangerous 
neighborhood. This is an argument, the inference link being 
indicated by the word ‘because’. The surface appearance is that 
the gangster’s statement that the last guy who didn’t pay had his 
store looted and destroyed, right after he failed to pay, is merely 
a statement. But is that really its function in the discourse? No, 
we all know it was meant as a threat, and will be so taken by the 
store owner (unless he is very naïve, or is lacking knowledge 
about his and the gangster’s circumstances).  
      Figure 6 shows the dialectical component. We begin at the 
left with an advising dialogue in which one party conveys an 
explicit warning to another party, optionally adding a 
recommendation on what the other party should do in order to 
avoid some negative consequences. So far there is no fallacy. 
There is merely an advising dialogue of the kind illustrated by 
the two examples from Consumer Reports. The middle box 
shows what happens when we interpret the text of discourse 
more deeply and identify the speech act of making a threat. This 
move constitutes an ad baculum fallacy, as the evidence box at 
the bottom in the middle indicates.  

However, in the gangster example, as shown in figures 4 
and 5, the threat is purely implicit, and so there is an additional 
dimension in this case. To extract the threat we have to insert 
missing premises and/or conclusions into the argument by 
viewing the argument as an enthymeme, an argument that can 
best be made sense of by inserting implicit premises and 
conclusions into it.  



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Figure 6: Structure of the ad baculum fallacy 
 
Once the implicit threat has been brought out, we need to take 
into account the strategic maneuver that the arguer is simply 
pretending to advise the other party, ostensibly by warning him 
about some event that will go against his interests, and offering 
some recommendation on how to avoid these negative 
consequences. To move to this third stage of the fallacy 
analysis, we need to identify the argument from threat, even 
though it is implicit, and recognize that the strategy of using a 
fallacious ad baculum is one of avoiding responsibility for the 
threat by leaving a route for plausible deniability. According to 
this analysis, the ad baculum fallacy, as illustrated by the 
gangster case, is not simply an error of reasoning. More than 
that, it is the strategic maneuver, a sophistical tactic, designed 
not only to strongly motivate the agent to whom it is directed, 
but also to artfully pretend that the arguer is acting in the helpful 
capacity of someone who is only giving friendly advice to the 
respondent. Essentially the gangster trying to immunize himself 
against future accusations of failure to follow the rules 
appropriate for this type of dialogue by making a threat instead 
of arguing. 

The juxtaposition of appearance and reality brought out by 
this analysis of the argumentation in the gangster example is 
reminiscent of the common definition of a fallacy as an 
argument that appears to be valid but is not (Hansen, 2002). 
Appearances can not only be misleading; they can be exploited. 
Some fallacies are merely errors caused by jumping to a 
conclusion too quickly, but others are subtle sophistical tactics 
used to unfairly get the best of a speech partner.  



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Now an objection needs to be taken up. The discussion of 
figure 1 might be criticized by saying that it is irrelevant, 
because what is at issue is whether R1’s argument is fallacious, 
but the figure displays R2’s argument. The criticism claims  that 
even though R2’s argument is clearly not fallacious, that says 
nothing about whether R1’s argument is fallacious. This 
criticism misunderstands what figure 1 is designed to show, and 
leaps to the wrong conclusion. As shown in the discussion under 
figure 1, the discussion is meant to show that perhaps there is 
nothing wrong with the argument from R2’s point of view. The 
point is that we need to examine whether the argument is 
fallacious or not from the dialectical point of view by looking at 
the dialogue protocols of how the argument is put forward by 
one party, and how it can be responded to by the other party as 
they take turns making moves in the dialogue. In this instance, 
as shown by the discussion, the issue depends on how R2 is 
allowed to respond to the argument put forward by R1, if it is 
important for him to preserve his antenna for future use in the 
mission, it might make practical sense for him to dig. Looked at 
from this dialectical perspective, R1’s argument would not 
appear to be an instance of the sophistical tactics type of ad 
baculum argument that is an attempt to block off the 
respondent’s capabilities for replying. Hence the dialectical 
analysis of the fallacy proposed in the paper can not only be 
used to marshal evidence in a given case to show an ad baculum 
argument is fallacious; it can also be used to show that it has not 
been used in a fallacious way in the robots example. 
 
 
11. Conclusions 
 
The most general conclusion of this paper is that whether a 
given ad baculum argument should be properly judged to be 
fallacious or not is dialectical, meaning that it depends on the 
type of discourse the argument is supposed to be part of. In a 
persuasion dialogue or an inquiry dialogue the speech act of 
making a threat is simply inappropriate. It is easy to rule out 
threats once one applies a formal model of either of these types 
of dialogue, because the speech act of making a threat is simply 
not included in the protocols for the speech acts considered as 
permitted moves in the dialogue. This phenomenon may explain 
why ad baculum arguments were considered more or less 
obviously fallacious for so long in the logic textbooks. It was 
probably assumed that the context was that of a persuasion 
dialogue or an inquiry. Also, as shown in the gangster case, an 
advising dialogue can commonly be joined to deliberation 



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dialogue, and in that main deliberation dialogue, as well as in 
the embedded advising dialogue, making a threat to the other 
party should not be included among the allowable speech acts. 

The robots example of ad baculum is a case where a direct 
threat was made. The gangster is an instance of an indirect 
threat. But in either type of case the basic ten-step procedure set 
out below can be applied to analyze and evaluate an ad baculum 
argument. 
 

• The first step is to identify the premises and conclusions 
in the given argument. 

• The second step is to find the inferential links that join 
these propositions as inferences using an argument 
diagram. 

• The third step is to identify argumentation schemes, such 
as the one for argument from negative consequences, 
that might fit any of the argument nodes. 

• The fourth step is to fill in any implicit premises or 
conclusions that are helpful for making sense of the 
argument. 

• The fifth step is to identify speech acts that link the 
argument to the type of dialogue that represents the 
communicative context. 

• The sixth step is to determine what the initial type of 
dialogue is supposed to be.  

• The seventh step is to inquire further into the details of 
the case to see if there has been a shift to another type of 
dialogue.  

• The eighth step is to determine whether the speech act, 
whether it be one of warning, advising or threatening, is 
an appropriate move in the original type of dialogue.  

• The ninth step is to determine how that speech act is 
being used in the secondary type of dialogue.  

• The tenth step is to look for evidence of the commission 
of a fallacy, for example the use of a sophistical tactic to 
try to make a threat seem like a warning.  

 
As shown by the two examples treated in the paper, the ten-step 
procedure is a method for marshaling the textual evidence in a 
given case, and for using the tools illustrated in the paper to 
arrive at an evidence-based judgment whether the argument in 
question should be considered fallacious or not. It is a 
misconception to think that any particular subset of the 
requirements formulated in the bullet points have to be satisfied 
or violated to make an argument fallacious. It would be nice if 



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the procedure was that simple, but it is not. The evaluation tools 
have to be applied to the textual evidence in the given case 
where it is suspected that an ad baculum fallacy has been 
committed, and the evidence on both sides has to be considered 
methodically by going through all ten steps in the evaluation 
procedure. 

This paper has presented a dialectical analysis of the ad 
baculum fallacy that can help us not only to evaluate ad 
baculum arguments but also to explain precisely what goes 
wrong when such an argument is fallacious by pinpointing a 
group of dialectical failures that can occur. So what has been 
accomplished in the paper is to provide not only an evaluation 
procedure for this type of argumentation but also a theory 
offering an explanation of why it can be justifiable to evaluate 
certain types of paradigm cases as being instances of the ad 
baculum fallacy. 

As well as being applicable to teaching informal logic 
skills, this method is applicable to the current technology of 
building software agents that communicate with each other for 
various purposes in multiagent systems. For example, 
autonomous software agents can be used to communicate 
information about the stock market, to buy and sell stocks, and 
to negotiate deals. Because they are autonomous, they can go 
ahead and engage in argumentation in a creative and original 
way, meaning that they can even commit fallacies, because they 
are programmed to get the best deal within the allowable moves 
in their communication protocols. These rules may allow moves 
like the speech act of making a threat or not. So the potential for 
an autonomous software agent committing an ad baculum 
fallacy on the Internet is there. 

Another conclusion is the recommendation that a new type 
of dialogue called advising dialogue should be added to the 
standard list of seven dialogues recognized so far in the 
argumentation literature. This new type of dialogue seems in a 
certain respect subsidiary to the main seven types of dialogue, 
because it often takes place during an interval in one of the other 
types of dialogue. It can occur in an inquiry dialogue or an 
information-seeking dialogue, but as its three stages have been 
framed in this paper, the opening stage posits the need to solve a 
problem or make a decision, characteristic features of a 
deliberation dialogue.  

An interesting subject for further study would be the 
relationship of argument from expert opinion, which is a well-
known argumentation scheme and set of critical questions, to 
advising dialogue. So far in the literature, the argumentation 
scheme for argument from expert opinion has been mainly 



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deployed and studied in a context of persuasion dialogue. But 
now it appears that argument from expert opinion and its 
relationship to critical questioning may be a more complex 
matter than we previously thought. We now need to recognize 
that evaluation of instances of expert opinion advice needs to be 
carried out not merely by considering one simple argument 
move or speech act, but by examining a connected sequence of 
moves that represents a special type of discourse in its own 
right. Study of advising discourse is a significant topic for 
further investigation of the ad baculum fallacy, as well as other 
problems in argumentation studies. 
  A problem posed by this paper, a highly significant and 
central one for argumentation studies, is that of enthymemes, the 
problem of filling in implicit premises and conclusions in an 
argument diagram. The findings of this paper suggest that one of 
the most important means of working toward a systematic 
method for dealing with this problem is to use speech acts 
within dialectical structures where the speech acts are used to 
define the permissible moves in a dialogue.   
 
Acknowledgements: Work in this paper was supported by 
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada 
Insight Grant 435-2012-0104: the Carneades Argumentation 
System.  
 
 
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