Typical of the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity is not only the non-supernaturalist interpretation of truth but also its application to both promises and threats. Traditionally ethical theorists treat the duty not to lie, or the duty to tell the truth, and the duty to keep one's promises as separate, independent duties. Deontologists, for instance, will recognize these duties but seldom or never a duty to make good one's threat. While they hate to get (too much) involved in consequences, this is just another indication that the consequences of acts they prescribe or forbid may already be implicit in the descriptions or formulations of those acts. (Compare the tendency not to call an utterance "a promise" when the bad consequences of doing something else than 'foretold' are, or would be, small or negligible; that is, the bad consequences with respect to people's, or other people's, happiness or well-being.)

How can the misleading 'intuition' to recognize a duty to keep one's promises and not to recognize a duty to make good one's threats --even not a prima facie one-- be explained? The reason cannot lie in what promises and threats have in common, namely that they refer to the future, usually to something the person promising or threatening will or will not do if a certain state of affairs does or does not hold. The reason must lie in what distinguishes promises from threats. And this is, first and foremost, that what a person intends to do in a promise is something of which 'e supposes that the person to whom 'e promises it, likes or prefers it, or something that the promiser supposes to be good or better for that person. On the other hand, what a person intends to do in a threat is something of which 'e supposes that the person whom 'e threatens does not like or prefer it, or something which the threatener supposes to be bad or not as good for that person. The difference between promises and threats is therefore not a question of truth but of well-being, beneficence or preference. Nonetheless, granted that there is a duty to keep one's promises which cannot be entirely derived from the duty to be beneficent, or which is to be more than a derivative utilitarian duty --as deontologists will claim with us-- and granted that factual-modal morality or passed-on intuition cannot be accepted as an argument per se, this duty to keep one's promises must ensue from the general duty to tell the truth. For this latter duty does not only concern the relationship between what a person says now and the past or present but also that between what 'e says now and what 'e will do or not do 'imself in the future.

(The way certain people used to, or still, react to the difference between aggrandizemental discrimination and abnegational discrimination can be similarly explained: relevancy-conditionally there is not any difference between the two, just as there is truth-conditionally no difference between keeping one's promise and carrying out a threat. The difference lies in eudaimonistic considerations. Aggrandizemental discrimination is supposed to make someone happy or to serve 'er well-being, whereas abnegational discrimination is supposed to make someone unhappy or to be unfavorable to 'im. Those who condemn the abnegational but not the aggrandizemental manifestations of discrimination thus completely neglect what is essential to discrimination, namely the relevancy-conditional aspect. Moreover, also here the deontologists among them turn out to be secretive consequentialists of the eudaimonist brand in their intuitive selection of so-called 'ultimate' or 'intrinsic' duties.)

From the point of view of truth it just does not matter at all whether the relationship between what one says now, and what one will do or not do in the future is a relationship with a state of affairs which is liked or not liked, preferred or not preferred, by the person to whom it was said. Therefore, from the point of view of truth proper there is not only a duty to keep one's promise but also a duty to make good one's threat. Both these duties are intrinsic (in our sense of doctrinal but also in the deontological sense of perfective or noninstrumental); neither one is ultimate, however. Ultimate is the duty to tell the truth, or not to lie, in the widest sense possible. Yet, this is not to say that the principle of truth is the sole principle underlying the duty to keep one's promise: the principle of beneficence is certainly part of this duty as well. In questions of promise-keeping truth and beneficence support each other almost by definition. (Exceptions are cases in which the total utility would decrease by keeping a promise.) This is quite unlike the nature of threats: here telling the truth, or having told the truth, and beneficence tend to pull in opposite directions. That is the very reason why traditional thinkers have (almost?) never had an instinctive urge to defend a duty to make good one's threat. As we ourselves feel bound not to base our normative doctrine on conventional, arbitrary or incoherent intuitions, we must conclude that a consistent interpretation of the principle of truth requires us to adopt the existence of a prima facie, derivative duty to make good one's threat even tho there is at the same time a derivative duty of beneficence according to which one should not do things which harm people or sentient beings.

Keeping one's promise is a nice thing to do, and both deontological and consequentialist theorists have probably found a duty such as carrying out one's threat a task too unpalatable for their taste. But if an act of making good one's threat is (believed to be) disagreeable, it is not disagreeable as an act in which an utterance is made true but as an act which has bad effects with respect to a purely nonpropositional value (particularly the minimization of unhappiness). The implication of our position is therefore not so much threaten and carry out your threat but rather never threaten, unless you are willing and able to stand the effects. The recognition of a prima facie duty to make good threats should not contribute to an increase of maleficent acts by people who have been threatening others with such acts; instead, this recognition should be conducive to a decrease in the number of threats, and preferably to their total extinction.

One reason that the DNI does not allow its adherents to edify children or people by indoctrination and commination is precisely that its respect for truth also extends to threats, inclusive of comminations, whether godly or not. Only theodemonical or other ideologies for which truth is nothing else than a believer's duty not to lie or a believer's duty not to break a promise can promise anything and everything, and can threaten people with anything or everything, without bothering about the question whether those promises and those threats will certainly or probably come true.

Not only should we not threaten someone, unless we are willing and able to create the unpleasant condition and to stand the consequences, we should not promise anything either, unless we are willing and able to create the pleasant condition and to stand the consequences too. In both cases the good consequences should on the whole outweigh the bad ones. Even when a threat is carried out which harms the person who has been threatened, the action in question should have more good than bad consequences, especially when taking into consideration the preventive effects of such an action. Consequences in themselves, however, are not part of the truth-conditional aspect of keeping a promise or carrying out a threat. The principle of truth is not a consequentialist principle even tho we look upon truth as a value. With respect to keeping a promise and making good a threat it is past-regarding and noncausal, and could therefore be called "antecedentialist". Like consequentialist principles the principle of truth is future-regarding with respect to statements about the future, but the relationship concerned is now one of correspondence between a proposition and a lower-level reality and not one of causality as in consequentialism. The principle of truth is present-regarding and noncausal with respect to statements about the present, and also past-regarding and noncausal with respect to statements about the past. This order is reversed for promises and threats since the utterance is there in the past and the reality it is about, schematically speaking, in the present.

If one promises something, one should keep one's promise; and if one threatens with something, one should carry out one's threat from the perspective of truth; that is, other things being equal. However, the principle of truth does not require people to promise something to others, or to threaten others with something, by any manner of means. In the same way it does not require people to say something or to believe something. It is only if one says or believes something that it should be true. Instead of telling and believing in what is far-fetched or irrelevantly unneutral, we should have the courage to acknowledge that there are things beyond, or still beyond, our ken. True humility bows to verity and silence rather than to comforting or threatening falsehoods.