When is an apology necessary?
If someone did something intentionally and knew it was inappropriate, misguided or otherwise wrong, then probably most of us would agree that this person should apologize.
If someone did the wrong thing but did not know it was wrong, or accidentally did the wrong thing, should this person still apologize? Does doing the wrong thing unintentionally (perhaps out of ignorance or fear) free a person from the responsibility of saying sorry?
My view is that, no, a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing, because apologizing is a way of communicating your recognition that what you did was, in fact, wrong to do. Not apologizing for doing the wrong thing in general means you either don't think it actually was the wrong thing to do, or you have a character flaw that precludes you from admitting failure and assuming responsibility.
[yes this is somewhat personal to me :-} ]
If someone did the wrong thing but did not know it was wrong, or accidentally did the wrong thing, should this person still apologize? Does doing the wrong thing unintentionally (perhaps out of ignorance or fear) free a person from the responsibility of saying sorry?
My view is that, no, a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing, because apologizing is a way of communicating your recognition that what you did was, in fact, wrong to do. Not apologizing for doing the wrong thing in general means you either don't think it actually was the wrong thing to do, or you have a character flaw that precludes you from admitting failure and assuming responsibility.
[yes this is somewhat personal to me :-} ]
Comments (69)
I think this is where we move from morals to ethics - with ethics informing the better choice.
If we bring in the question of right or wrong, we forget the purpose of the apology, which is to show both sympathy and empathy. Best case, this undoes the wrong if it leads to a corrected misunderstanding - always a possibility. Worst case, someone apologizes to a selfish person to whom one has committed no real offense and the offense is confirmed in that person's mind.
But then again that was probably going to happen anyway.
The only reason I see not to err on the side of apology is when you feel you're being manipulated more than once into apologizing to a person who is trying to use conflict to raise status.
But if you intentionally do the wrong thing, surely you must believe that in some larger way it is the right thing? So it would then be unreasonable to apologise - unless you have also come to believe you were in fact wrong and so changed your mind about what is right.
Whereas if you do something wrong by accident, then apologising is no big deal. You are not to blame. An accident is. You are apologising for an accident for which you are not responsible in any intentional sense.
Thus either you intentionally did it because it seemed right - so why apologise? Or you accidentally did it - and your apology is now essentially vacuous. The accident bears the burden of the blame. You are really saying you would have acted right if you could.
So these mark the two extremes. And neither accurately describe the majority of the real world encounters you are likely concerned about.
Where are apologies both morally warranted and meaningful? Well if you thought you were doing the right thing and later see it as being the wrong thing.
Then in practice, an apology is just a good way to head off social conflict no matter what the wrongs or rights. It is a pragmatic response if you don't want drama.
But what is life without drama? >:)
If you cause harm by accident or through bad behavior, the correct actions are 1) acknowledge the error and 2) make things right. Giving an apology is like asking for forgiveness, you do something wrong to someone and then ask them to make it right. It lets you off the hook. It lets you avoid taking responsibility for your own actions.
So, if I accidentally back my car into your mailbox, I am not responsible? It's "the accident's" fault?
The distinction between legal and moral responsibility?
I don't think legal responsibility comes into this. I guess we're talking about personal responsibility. Acknowledgement that my behavior caused someone harm and acceptance that I am obligated to make it right. Is that moral responsibility?
In cases where you damage something due to negligence I guess the question then becomes whether you were intentionally negligent.
I mean you might have intentionally allowed yourself to be slack about attending to what you were doing because you wanted to focus on something else. This would contrast with a case where your attention was inadvertently distracted by some dramatic event.
People can do the wrong thing knowing it is the wrong thing because they do not care about morality, and care more about themselves or whatever. Promising a friend to do something for them but deciding to not fulfill this promise and go have fun partying or whatever instead is an example.
If I were to crash my car into someone else's on accident, I would feel compelled to apologize even though I didn't do it on purpose.
The law says you are responsible. It says you can't have been paying due care and attention. So now there is a social standard in place. And the OP seemed more directed at some kind of personal absolute morality than at social/legal norms.
If you insulted DB, called him an idiot, and there was a law that said you must apologise, then personal moral choices aren't really involved. It just a norm in play. You don't have to mean it when you do what you are supposed to do. It doesn't seem a character flaw to abide by a norm even when you don't accept it should apply in your circumstances. Instead, isn't that even more admirable? :)
So what would you actually do if you knocked over my mailbox? Would it depend on there being possible witnesses?
The problem with real life is there are always extenuating circumstances. Right and wrong can never be so black and white.
That's what I wonder. Can people actually choose to do wrong? If they are making real world choices, they must weight the decision with many factors. And of course it is easy to rationalise and tip the balance the way that favours yourself and your interests. But that just says people construct some belief about whether they are overall in the right or in the wrong. And having done that, by definition really, they pick what is for them the "right".
Talk of intentionally picking the course you know to be wrong doesn't sound coherent. You are really talking about people picking the course they know you would likely judge wrong - but they would rather see what they want to do as right.
So the point is that all such choices are already constructed to be defensible as "right". It should be no surprise that the wrong-doer starts with that general belief. It is only if you can appeal to something outside the person's private intentionality - like a social norm of what was the right action - that you then create some different standard other than the person's own freedom to construct their choices.
Unless you are arguing some absolute basis for morality, you are stuck with having to rely on social norms. And when it comes to apologies, even the law doesn't generally like getting involved in that.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yeah, but that is then normally going to be a case of your negligence. So it isn't literally an accident - an act of God. It is culpable negligence.
If you are instead forced into the car in front of you by the car behind you, would you still feel as compelled? As a matter of form, you might say "sorry about that". But just as quickly, you would point out who was really to blame.
So your OP seemed to want a black and white absolute moral principle. But morality is normally pragmatic.
Apologies are a social tool. People use them to get away with stuff. Blame the accident, it wasn't me. And people demand them because they care about dominance hierarchies. They want someone who has attacked their social standing to humble themselves. But mostly apologies just grease the wheels and lower the potential for confrontations. They are a friendly habit where there is not enough at stake to want to risk a test of wills.
So I'm saying the OP seems to want some general metaphysical-strength position of the giving and withholding of apologies. But really, is there anything more going on here than social game-playing and norms of maturity? Apologies would be tools to use to your best advantage, whatever you judge that to be in a social situation.
It has happened to me. I was turning around in someone's driveway and backed into it. They weren't home. I went back my home, got my tools, and did my best to fix the damage. Since they still weren't home, I left a note with my phone number.
Quoting apokrisis
I'm a bit shocked that you don't seem to understand. It's not that I'm to blame, it's that I'm responsible. I don't deserve punishment or censure, I'm obligated to make things right.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the OP was about personal insult. If you hurt my feelings, you might want to show me that you are hurting just as much, and now we can be all square. Everyone equally happy in being equally unhappy. :)
You're right, I wasn't thinking of the subject just in relation to an insult or hurt feelings, although I think what I had to say is still appropriate. Actually, it works better for emotional or personal failings than it does for more substantive ones. I know from experience, both as the victim and the perpetrator, that an acknowledgement of error and genuine attempt to set things straight are very powerful responses for people who are hurt emotionally.
I don't agree with what I see to be your reduction of moral rightness/wrongness to subjective or inter-subjective opinions, or calling it "right" instead of right. You and I seem to be using different concepts here, as it is plain to me that choosing the course that is morally wrong is very much so possible and coherent and happens all the time, whereas you seem to be using it in the sense of prudential rationality, or weakness of will.
I'd be more interested in something like the ancient Greek notion that evil is born from ignorance. But that would lead us to the question of moral responsibility in general, and not just apologizing (but also punishment, justice, redemption, etc).
Quoting apokrisis
No, not at all, I explicitly reject any sort of black-and-white moral absolutism. At least, any sort of morality that can be cashed out in real life. But rejecting absolutism doesn't necessarily imply relativism or extreme particularism. We can certainly have prima facie principles and duties, which I think ultimately is what is the case. So the OP, far from asking for absolutes, is asking for general, "at first glance" moral principles. At first glance, when someone does something wrong, they ought to apologize regardless of their intentions. But this of course isn't an absolute. It's only a guideline for what tends to be the most appropriate thing to do.
Really, I'm less interested in the meta-ethics this time and more interested in actual normative ethics.
I'm not going to apologize for something I don't see as wrong. That would just be insincere of me, a sniffling apology to get back on someone's "good" side. I'll apologize when I think I actually did screw up and feel the other person deserves an apology.
I apologize if that was rude... /s
Edit: to an extent I come from a Levinasian stance, in which I experience a primordial demand to apologize to anyone and everyone simply for my very existence. I get in other people's way, interrupt their projects, irritate them, etc. Any sort of self-righteous indignation is a violence against the other person. So, I do feel a need to apologize to you, just as I feel the need to apologize to everyone. But from a broader, third-person perspective, as an impartial observer, I don't think someone else would agree that I should apologize for each and every thing I do.
http://www.alicemaclachlan.com/research.html
I'm feeling for myself, after some deliberation, that apology is part of a ritual or symbolic exchange. You make an apology when you believe that by such a speech act you will place yourself, and the person you're apologising to, in a better relation than your present mutual standing. That's it!
My other major source is Karine Polwart - a philosophy graduate who became a singer-songwriter. This is her song 'Sorry'.
I agree that apologizing can put two people on higher mutual standing with each other. But I will say that apologizing only to get to a better standing with another person is insincere, even manipulative. You should apologize first and foremost when you have done something wrong and the other person deserves to be supplicated to. Sincere apologizing is an act of humble submission - you put yourself at the mercy of the other person, and they can either reject or accept your apology.
I'm not hung up on it. I hadn't thought about it at all until I saw this thread and noticed the irony.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I attempted to show that you did, in fact, screw up, but you abandoned the conversation and to this day have made no attempts to reconcile our relationship. I don't care if it is or isn't, I'm just pointing this out to you.
Either you're lying about not caring, or your intent is to create drama. Why, though?
But I wasn't. I was pointing out that you look to be claiming that the personally subjective has an objective basis here. I say the nearest to any objective basis is the prevailing social norm of which an apology would be a token of recognition.
So whether you feel you are really in the right, or really in the wrong, is not really relevant to the norm. Social circumstance rules whether apologies are required or not.
But then apologies have a social function. They mend hurt feelings. They bring people together where otherwise they might be pushed apart. So - from a personal perspective - you would use them to your own best advantage, depending on what you want from a social situation.
The fact that there is a norm, and that you can then choose whether or not to conform, gets you into other social games - like those of status hierarchies. You can make rational decisions about whether you want to be the assertive/non-apologetic one, or the submissive/apologise for your very existence one.
So we just keep moving further away from any personal absolute necessity to apologise or not. There are layers of quite normal social gaming involved. The existence of a norm becomes the basis for playing with that norm. Not apologising gains a secondary meaning.
In any human interaction, there is you, me, and the group. The good old Peircean semiotic triad. Apologies then serve as part of the symbolic currency of our social interaction. They are a way to trade status and salve hurt status feelings. And I can then show you which social group I am part of, which I think you are part of, depending on which group's norms I apply, and whether I feel they extend to cover you.
I guess you don't see it in these pragmatic micro-social terms as modern western society stresses a social style in which social norms are as abstracted as possible - made an impersonal moral code secured, if need be, as enforceable law. And that approach to running society then needs every individual to act as a rational moral agent. There just is a rule to cover all occasions. We are all forced into the one social group and meant to be equal, so there should be a rather black and white story about when apologies are either necessary or not required.
But how ideal is that socially constructed ideal? Maybe it is good, maybe it is bland, maybe it is a rule for fools, or the basis of a modern civil society. That at least seems the proper level at which to be addressing the "moral" question implied in the OP.
Quoting mcdoodle
Yep.
Or normal social behaviour. What you call manipulation is merely rational social strategy surely?
Again, either morality has some socially-transcendent reality or it just is simply that which enables society to exist in a functional fashion.
If you believe that morality is socially transcendent, then I can see how you would feel an individual, as a perfect moral agent, would have to be "true to themselves" by being "true to the morally absolute" ... so far as they discover that within their own (not at all socially derived) belief system. :)
But if morality is about collective social goals, then we instead hope that mature individuals are rational game players. They don't merely just follow norms blindly, nor ignore them selfishly, but play the social games creatively and strategically.
Neither is true. Either you're blinded by your own self-importance or your intent is to create drama. I haven't cared or thought one iota about you since I sent that last PM, the proof of which being that I haven't really interacted with you at all since then, judging it to be a waste of time in light of the incident that occurred. I'm doing so now because it seems especially relevant. I will resume not caring after this conversation is over, assuming, like last time, we are unable to reconcile. If that doesn't interest you, that's perfectly fine by me.
How is it relevant, though? You actually said you brought it up because you thought it was ironic.
Right, that's why it was relevant.
I don't see how we can't have both. Morality as socially-transcendent yet moral agents maneuvering in creative and strategic ways. There's nothing incoherent from what I can tell with the notion that there is an actual transcendent morality but it's muddled and "gray" in the colloquial way of looking at it.
No, that's not relevant. This is a philosophical discussion, not a place for you to mention private interactions and relish in the apparent irony.
I never said that. I said I have no interest in reconciling in this discussion, which you have masterfully managed to de-rail.
Of course it is incoherent. Either the basis of morality is transcendent of society or it is simply whatever society does in terms of what works for it.
If there is some moral absolute, then there is no excuse for a moral agent to ignore that. Moral relativism becomes simply indefensible. One's duty is not to the whims of society but the absolutes we claim to have transcendent status.
And then vice versa. If morality is relative to the social good - what works for it - then that is the standard to which a moral agent ought to direct their strategic reasoning.
Things are then only gray or muddled to the degree that moral agents can't make up their minds which is the case.
But yes. Many really are muddled in just this fashion.
In case you're still confused and didn't understand my original post, the irony has to do with the fact that I felt slighted and trolled by you, said as much, apologized to you for whatever I may have inadvertently done to cause the rift, and then received no apology from you. In fact, I received no reply at all. Imagine, then, my surprise at seeing this very same person both start a thread about when to apologize and make the statement quoted above. Yes, in the off chance that you are actually bothered by your own hypocrisy and interested in reconciling, I felt I had to respond. But again, I genuinely don't care either way, as it's not up to me, and I've long since seen the futility of being irritated about things one can't change.
It's not incoherent. There's absolutely nothing incoherent with the notion that there is a fact of the matter as to what we ought to do that transcends society, but that our epistemic access to this is muddled, confused, or otherwise limited in some way. There's a lot of truth to the saying that doing the right thing is by accident. Or - to put an Aristotelian twist on it - doing the right thing is oftentimes (but not always) due to a prior development of habit, in which action virtuously or morally comes naturally, and the moral agent is capable of deftly maneuvering given the circumstances ... but that this does not constitute perfect moral knowledge. (I've been toying with the idea that given our nature and circumstances there cannot ever be a "right" action, but that's a different topic).
Ultimately we may divide meta-ethical theories between dualistic theories and monistic theories. In fact there is only one dualistic theory (intuitionism), and four monistic theories (naturalism, subjectivism, non-cognitivism, nihilism). I'm of course championing intuitionism - I think there is a clear difference in kind between facts and values, and that any sort of morality that can be recognized as morality must employ some form of rational intuition.
"What works for society" is ambiguous, because it hides the fact that society only works if people do actually believe in some form of transcendent value - even the social contract theory implicitly holds that life, or something similar, is good. There is a system of justice because people believe justice to be morally important. Laws are made (sometimes) with morality in mind. etc. To the degree that someone believes what is good (transcendent) = what maintains social stability, then doing what will keep society stable will be one and the same with doing the good.
>:O Dayuuuum the barracuda ain't apologizing for noughin' ma dawgs...
I discovered that some people will never apologise even if you put a movie of something they did wrong in front of them. Some people hate being "forced" to do something, and just out of spite will not do it, even if things will be worse for them if they don't apologise. That's what happens when the ego grows too large >:O
Quoting darthbarracuda
I've already told you that I don't recognize what I did to have been inappropriate. Thus I do not feel compelled to apologize.
Quoting Thorongil
Yet you picked a terrible place to bring this up.Quoting Thorongil
Then what exactly was it supposed to do, then? I have no idea why you thought to bring a private conversation up in a public discussion, and re-route the philosophical discussion to your personal gripe with how I treated you however long ago that was.
Well said. There are lots of reasons to say 'I'm sorry' (un-ironically), but I think that covers most of them.
No, in my view. I assume that most people would also answer 'no' here.
An apology is necessary when one has harmed or done wrong to someone else. The problem with your argument is that you're viewing the issue of forgiveness through the lens of your own perspective, as the perpetrator. You may not have intended harm, but that does not exculpate you from wrong-doing. If you caused harm to someone, intentionally or unintentionally, then you are in the wrong. And if you're in the wrong, then an apology is necessary. An apology is necessary because it creates an atmosphere in which you acknowledge your wrong-doing, and the victim acknowledges your acknowledgement. Communication leads to a better understanding of the situation.
Doesn't matter, for you said that "a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing." So if you refuse to apologize, then you don't actually agree with this statement and are in fact a liar and a hypocrite.
Quoting darthbarracuda
It's a highly relevant place to bring it up.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I've already answered that. Look, if you don't want to reconcile, that's fine. Just say so and stop stringing me along here. I've said my piece and so the ball's in your court.
In other words, the unbolded and bolded halves of this sentence contradict each other. Pick one.
Oh shit. No wonder I couldn't make sense of your position if you subscribe to that.
If you were saying that the intuitions are rooted in our biology - our evolved circuitry which rules our social behaviour - then that might be something though.
Like for instance - The neurobiology of moral sense: facts or hypotheses?https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3616987/
Quoting darthbarracuda
Do you mean transcendent in the deflationary sense of just being hierarchically organised? Perhaps you do in stressing the general vs the particular earlier.
Its a big difference. Of course we can organise our social thinking into general rules and particular exceptions. This gives our thinking its organised complexity.
But to talk of morality transcending that socially-constructed framework is to talk about it having some human-independent, and nature or evolution independent, basis.
I'm not sure from your words whether you have clearly disentangled the two incompatible positions and chosen a side to stand on. Either our morality is the normative product of natural circumstances or it has some super-natural basis.
No, I'm not going to apologize because I don't recognize what I did to have been inappropriate. You may think it was inappropriate, but I don't agree with you on this. How is this difficult to understand?
No, this is a false dichotomy. For instance I think mathematics is transcendent to socially-accepted norms. Logic transcends society. Yet our capacity to ascertain logic and mathematics presumably comes from evolution. I think the same thing applies to morality.
There's nothing "spooky" or "queer" about objective morality under an intuitionist view. I think we come to know moral truths in a similar way we come to know mathematical truths, or understand logical reasoning. I think you're begging the question here by assuming that an evolutionary explanation of morality necessarily precludes the possibility of objective morality. Hence why you automatically assume any objective morality must be "super-natural".
Of course, since I deny values can be reduced to natural properties in the same way water can be reduced to H2O, I'm committed to there being a separate realm of things other than descriptive facts. Stabilizing society =/= good, because it's an open ended question as to what goodness is, in both the analytic and synthetic sense.
I never apologise as to do so would be an admission of guilt. If i had intentionally committed this transgression then I would not want to apologise; were it accidental then I'd have no need.
Acting mindfully, thoughtfully and consciously means never having to apologise.
I can do something that later turns out to have been regrettable. In such cases I offer an explanation. If that is not enough then the failure is with the person I am talking to and not with me.
Maybe I'd be more inclined to talk about this if you brought this up elsewhere. I don't know why you continue to insist on discussing a private gripe with me in a public discussion.
Correct. But it also privileges the fully self actualising self over that self’s social milieu. So as a moral stance, it is tied to a modern abstract notion of society.
And it does still leave open the fact that apologies can have useful transactional values within such a “purely rational” setting. Other folk still tend to have feelings that can get hurt. It can pay to recognise that even if no moral ought is involved.
(I should add that we then ought still to apologise when we are responsible for accidental harms from negligence. If we pretend to mindful action, we have to live up to that. Obvious really.)
Quoting darthbarracuda
So this intuitionism is really structuralism? I could agree to that.
Intuitionism....
Structuralism....
So you claim to be an intuitionist, yet argue like a structuralist. Like me, you believe that existence is the product of emergent structures or constraints. These structures are selected on the basis of some deep functional principle, such as the least action principle of physics.
Plato was a sort of structuralist in fact. The mathematical forms were somehow an expression of the telos of "the Good". There was some optimisation principle going on in terms of least action, or the invariances due to symmetry.
But the Good is of course then a warm, fuzzy, human concept of essential cosmic value. So what we now look for in nature is just a straightforward optimisation principle - like least action. A structure is good (it can endure and thus exist) as it expresses an equilibrium balance.
This structuralism can then be applied to the understanding of social systems. It is how we get down to a view of society as a functional equilibrium balance of competition and co-operation - or give and take.
So if you want to appeal to some general "transcendent" moral principle that transcends particular societies, then structuralism gives you the immanent story on what is "objectively" rational or optimal. There is a deep structure that works. And this is "intuitive" only in the sense that humans can guess at the shape of deep structures by inference to the best explanation. We are pretty good at guessing general principles (as a result of that being a selection constraint on human cognition in the first place).
So between realism and idealism, social constructionism and Platonism, there is as usual pragmatism or structuralism. Reality is ruled by the deep structure that is "what works" in a developmental sense.
I remember we had this difficulty over ontic structural realism. You sort of liked it, but then backed away into some confused mix of constructionism and absolutism.
You seem to want absolute truths - where that would fit your personal beliefs about ethical matters. But then just as often you will argue against people that their ethical positions are mere social constructions.
Only structuralism can bring dualist or transcendent Platonic ontologies back down to Terra Firma. A constraints-based metaphysics can explain why there is a deep structure to reality without having to invoke anything outside of nature itself as the cause.
"Intuition", as I'm sure you are aware, is a term used in philosophy that has lots of different meanings depending on the context. I most definitely am not using intuition in the sense of some magical "sixth sense", nor am I affirming what is quoted here. I am coming from the perspective of philosophers like Moore, Ross, Prichard and Sidgwick, i.e. the British Intuitionists, as well as contemporary moral intuitionists like Audi and Huemer. Ethics is a separate branch of inquiry, and cannot be reduced to a descriptive science. We come to know moral truths in a very similar way to how we come to know mathematical or logical truths - we "see" something as good or evil, right or wrong, just as we come to "see" the validity of a logical proof, or "see" how a mathematical theorem makes sense.
Quoting apokrisis
See this is where I find an issue with naturalistic ethics, including natural law theory. The "goodness" of a working piece of equipment, the "perfection" of a functional object or system, is NOT equivalent to "goodness" in the moral sense. I think, as Moore does, that moral goodness is undefinable analytically. And so while we may come to see what grounds moral goodness, say pleasure or virtue, the analytic definition of goodness will always be transcendent upon this ground.
The Good is not a warm, fuzzy feeling in the non-cognitive sense. Perhaps we respond to the Good by feeling warm and fuzzy but it certainly is not the case that this feeling itself is what is the Good.
I don't know if equality is implied, but there does seem to be some recognition of worth. I tend to more or less explicitly size up others. Are they truly peers? Or not quite? Or not a chance? Or (exciting and threatening) superior somehow?
I'd apologize to anyone if I felt I had violated the informal but important social contract. I've apologized to 'enemies' as they apologized to me (I apologized for being too counter-aggressive, for instance.)
Quoting Sunshine Sami
Same as above, in my view. No equality implied, but only a basic respect of the other as (at least) minimally worthy of regard. I would not say 'hello' to people with threatening demeanors. I cut off empathy/recognition as a preparation for symbolic/literal violence. Now and then especially certain men remind me of big dogs that got away from their owners. Funny how a whiff of the threat of violence changes all the rules.
Quoting Sunshine Sami
Right. And occasionally you might tell your spouse that you're sorry just to stop her acting the fool. You are (in your own mind) justified in faking a sincere apology if an angry friend or lover demands one in an excessive way. All's fair in love and war, etc.
You need to decide if this is your story or not. If it is, then structuralism accounts for how deep “truths” are “pragmatically” emergent rather than Platonically transcendent.
To be consistent, I guess you would have to be a mathematical Platonist. Hence your notion of intuitionism is really the one relying on mystical revelationism rather than inferential abstraction.
That gets us back to my feeling that your position is not well thought out. It is pick n mix and dependent on whatever best suits your personal ethical preferences.
Checking out Audi, his epistemology in fact seems like standard pragmatism. We make abductive leaps to get our arguments going. But maybe it lacks the follow through - the inductive confirmation of the ethical theory thus produced?
Anyway, ethical intuitionism seems pretty bust on most accounts.
Definitely. We can accrue a symbolic debt. Others can put us in the maybe-an-enemy category. An apology can resolve the ambiguity and reframe the event as an accident or a misunderstanding.
I think we'd generally rather lose 50 dollars to an error than have 5 dollars stolen from us intentionally. 'Violence is the quest for identity.' A willful violation of our dignity/worth calls the blood to revenge. (We may swallow this rage for reasons of prudence. We may comfort ourselves with a thought that the offender is himself beneath notice. )
(By the way, you can highlight what you respond to and a quote button will appear. This notifies those you respond to that you have responded.)
I've retracted my claws after an offender's apology in my own life. It was sincere. It worked. That's when I apologized for being too outraged. (A woman was involved. I might have slapped his face with a dainty purple glove and chose a second and a brace of pistols. An affair of honor. Old school primitive stuff in the blood.)
I too mature to take anime as some sort of moral guide. Why don't you at least TRY to grow up?
You mean I might apologise to spare another's feelings? Yes I might, but I don't like to do that as it gives me the moral high ground, and that's not what I am interested in. I prefer to be honest.
This is a huge misunderstanding these days, unfortunately. Intuitionism fell out of favor because the major defenders died, and the idea was subsequently misinterpreted horribly later on. It's getting a good revival nowadays though. Michael Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism was one of the books that helped launch it back to the forefront of moral realism. But this is a detour from the OP, I'll make a different post later when I have more time.