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- Title
A Bolt of Fear.
- Authors
Wreen, Michael J.
- Abstract
This article challenges the claim that there is anything like a general fallacy of ad baculum, and try, very briefly, to determine wherein the goodness of good ad baculums lies. Many other things authors of texts and theorists of the argument have said about it are inaccurate, too. Contrary to common opinion, an ad baculum need not involve force, violence, an attempt to cause someone to do something, or even threats, in the way the term is usually used, and one can argue ad baculum with oneself, without the use of language, and to languageless creatures. The argument is not essentially dialectical, not in the everyday sense of the term, anyway. Even the ought that figures in a reconstructed ad baculum's conclusion has few restrictions on it. It can be a moral or a legal ought, or any of a number of other ought's as well. Nor do the speech acts of warning or threatening have any inherent connection with the argument's definition, or with whether or not a given instance of it is fallacious. Ad baculums that involve the speech acts of warning or threatening are possible, of course, but neither speech act need be involved, and, in fact, no speech need be. Assessment of the argument is also independent of all speech act considerations.
- Subjects
APPEAL to force (Logical fallacy); LOGICAL fallacies; JUDGMENT (Logic); LOGIC; REASONING
- Publication
Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1989, Vol 22, Issue 2, p131
- ISSN
0031-8213
- Publication type
Article