Apologies acknowledge a harm. Understanding is a key input to belief, which is a key input to decision making, which gets more relevant when that same person's decisions played a role in the harm. But like Bayesian probabilities, harm makes sense acausally, and the influence can originate from norms and values, not just concrete humans. So being sorry someone died from disease acknowledges a harm, and can still be relevant to the extent it channels cognition of the norms and values that would try to prevent that harm if given a chance. The concrete human channeling this idealized judgement of values doesn't need to change policy for the apology to be meaningful and predict what the influence of the values would be under the right circumstances, when channeled by someone in a position to do something relevant.
When a human doesn't intend to change behavior, or to compensate people for negative externalities, there might still be norms within that human that judge this to be a harm (with the human being influenced but not fully controlled by the norm), including coalition-reifying norms that could act through other humans or institutions, and understanding the possible behaviors at those other sites that channel the influence of the norm benefits from knowing whether the norm makes the judgement of harm having been done. So even an apology that doesn't come with an intention of compensation can still be meaningful and truthful in this sense, as a claim about decision-making cognition of an actor that is not the human delivering the apology. Similarly, future opportunities to compensate or to enact a relevantly changed policy are not always available, but the apology can still express a judgement about that single past instance, the way a Bayesian probability of a one-time event can still be quantitatively wrong.
(A claim of acknowledging a harm or of being influenced by a norm that aspires to make that judgement can of course be false, so observations of changed behavior or compensation are very useful evidence. But this is about practical ways of judging the truth of an apology, or extracting some use out of it, not something inherent to the meaning of an apology.)
In the bumping into someone example, the sorry seems to be mainly a status re-adjustment. A failure to apologise is a claim to have a higher status than the bumpee. An apology reaffirms the relative status as what it was before the bump.
If the harm caused is significant such that the status readjustment is insufficient then it gets more complicated and the bumping example is unhelpful.
If someone in a rush trod on my foot and broke it then I would not accept an apology if I didn’t think they were intending to change, even if they offered me a nebulous IOU.
A: "Hey neighbor. I'm sorry that my backyard burger grilling caused you to have an asthma attack."
B: "Thanks. I'm sorry you have to choose between tasty grilling and your neighbor's health. I'd rather we lived in a world with charcoal-grilled Impossible Burgers and no asthma attacks, but we don't get to. Sucks."
A: "Oh, to be clear, I'm going to keep on grilling burgers. I just wanted to acknowledge that it sucks that my grilling has a side effect that harms you."
B: "Um, what good is your apology to me if you don't change anything? I don't value your having (or expressing) regret, I value being able to breathe in my own backyard."
A; "Well, I'm ... letting you know that I'm going to be grilling more, so you won't be surprised?"
B: "Oh, so I won't be surprised by becoming unable to breathe, because I'll expect being unable to breathe?"
A: "It sounds kinda mean when you put it like that."
B: "I hope you see why I am not terribly reassured by your apology."
A: "Sorry about that."
This is an essentialist view of apology and thus very incomplete.
Apologies are not a binary, nor a scalar. They are a vector. They mean different things in different circumstances to different people.
Just deciding on your one best definition seems almost pointless.
Things apologies mean:
Etc, and remixes thereof
This seems obviously true, quite impactful, and largely overlooked. Since noticing this, it seems clear that different people mean different things and have different assumptions about what others mean by apologizing. I'm surprised to see a rationalist discussion of apology not recognize this.
God Doctor Gary Chapman, wrote "the five types of apology" applying the same core insight from his more popular book about the five love languages. "Different people think of this differently; it might be useful to have a few simple categories to aid communication about this". They don't have to be the correct or only categories to be an improvement from assuming a binary or scalar. My listed meanings aren't the same as his.
Much of what apologies mean is communicated by tone and body language, but being more explicit is often helpful.
When a limited liability company gets sued, only the assets of the company are at stake, not the personal wealth
this is actually a great metaphor here.
under "apologize when updating", when you take an action, your liability is limited: costs are local to the action. the aggrieved party can only go after the policy by which you made the error.
under "apologize to indicate debt", liability is unlimited! the aggrieved party can go after your social status, your chocolate, your emotions...
In "The Financial Ledger Theory of Apologies", Ben Pace argues against the view that one should only apologize for having harmed someone if one acknowledges that one should have behaved differently. Rather, Pace thinks that it makes sense to accept ex post costs imposed on others "on one's own ledger" even if one has no intention of changing one's ex ante behavior. Unfortunately, Pace's analysis is sorely lacking on several counts.
Genuine Regret Implies Policy Updates
Pace writes:
But we should distinguish sincerely intended apologies from the social convention of saying the words "I'm sorry" to acknowledge a harm. If you routinely bump into people while moving quickly, it's better to say "Sorry" than to not acknowledge the incident at all, but you shouldn't be writing blog posts claiming that saying it makes people not have to worry about you being around them, because if you don't change how you move, then people do have to worry about you bumping into them! If people were to stop worrying about you bumping into them because you said the conventional words, "I'm sorry," then they would mis-anticipate their future experiences of you bumping into them.
Why is it better to say "Sorry" than nothing at all? I posit that it's because acknowledging the harm is understood to imply some sort of quantitative update to one's moving policy. (That's policy in the sense of reinforcement learning, not necessarily a consciously or verbally formulated "policy.") If you have normal social instincts, imposing a cost on someone such that you're socially expected to say "Sorry" feels worse than not doing so, and your brain is probably pretty good at adjusting your behavior to do things that feel bad less often: you'll quantitatively move slower or pay more attention to where you're going. If your policy doesn't update and you keep bumping into people all the time, eventually they'll stop accepting your "I'm sorry" as meaningful. In accordance with Pace's comrade's theory, the value of the apology depends on changing one's behavior going forward.
We should also distinguish sincerely intended apologies from use of the words "I'm sorry" to convey sympathy. As a particularly straightforward example, "I'm sorry your grandmother died" is usually not a confession of murder. However, other apparent apologies for harms that do involve the actions of the person saying sorry are often better understood as expressions of sympathy rather than true apologies. (It's unfortunate that idiomatic English doesn't make the distinction more clear.)
Pace mentions the example of it not "mak[ing] financial sense to reliably support some niche diet at your conference (like keto, or kosher)." If someone complains to the organizer that kosher food was not offered at a conference, it's polite for the organizer to say, "I'm sorry about that," but insofar as the organizer stands by their catering decision and has no intention of changing it at future conferences, it should be regarded as an expression of sympathy rather than a true apology.
On the other hand, if the organizer says, "Hey, I am taking these costs that you have faced, and I'm putting them on my ledger; I owe it to you to make you whole," that would seem to imply that they don't stand by the catering decision and will endeavor to get kosher food at future conferences. What would it even mean to purportedly accept the cost "on one's ledger" but not change one's behavior going forward?
Apologies Need Not Be Accepted
Financial transactions necessarily have two parties. I can borrow money from you on mutually agreed terms, but I can't unilaterally borrow money from you on whatever terms I choose: that would be theft, not a loan.
Apologies also involve two parties. If I apologize for sinning against you and ask your forgiveness, saying that I'll make up it to you some other way, the fact that I have to ask implies that you might say No. I don't get to unilaterally decide what would constitute making it up to you.
Pace oddly doesn't seem to consider the possibility of apologies not being accepted. He writes:
But the invitation to think of you as owing something is only meaningful if the thought is true—if you'll actually pay out.
When someone wrongs me, it seems like the smallest ask I could reasonably make in exchange for my forgiveness is that they not do that again (or more generally, update their policy such that they're less likely to do it again). Not to ask to be "made whole"—for the past cannot be changed—but simply that they do better in the future, which can.
If they refuse, saying, "That's sad, but I will not stop doing the thing that hurt you. Yet I will take this cost on my ledger. I'm sorry. That's on me. Think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time," I have to admit I'm skeptical. If I can't ask not to be hurt again, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?
I think if I asked for their car, they would rightly refuse—"What? No, I don't owe you that." But if it makes sense for them to reject an ask for recompense that's unreasonably high given the initial harm, then it makes sense for me to reject a bid that's unreasonably low. If they're not going to change their behavior (!) and their "I'm sorry" comes with a vague invitation to think of them as owing me an unspecified (but apparently "small") something, I think it makes sense for me to say, "Okay. I don't forgive you." A theory of apologies that has nothing to say about when apologies should be accepted would appear to be incomplete. Debtors don't get to unilaterally decide how much debt to write in their ledger.
Limited Liability Is Not a Gift From Debtors to Creditors
Pace calls himself as "a limited-liability-jokester", and characterizes his stance as "allow[ing] [him] to take risks while assuring people that—in expectation—they won't be worse off for interacting with me." The metaphor mixes a partly-correct understanding of limited liability with a deep misconception.
The part about enabling risk-taking is right. When a limited liability company gets sued, only the assets of the company are at stake, not the personal wealth (not invested in the business) of the founders or shareholders. Limited liability status is judged to benefit Society by allowing entrepreneurs to take risks that they couldn't afford under unlimited liability.
The part about assuring other people that they won't be worse off for interacting with the limited entity is wrong, though. It's the other way around: limited liability is about keeping things off one's ledger of debts, such that "apologizing" for bad business decisions doesn't mean becoming homeless. Dealing with a limited rather than an unlimited company is riskier to counterparties, not safer, and that risk needs to be priced in, even if it's still worth it for limited liability companies to exist (because the alternative is the companies not existing).
Insincere Apologies Are Fake, Not Supererogatory
Pace portrays his stance as more generous than that of his comrade: the comrade thinks they should only apologize when they should have done better and can credibly promise to do better in the future; Pace thinks apologies still make sense when it's not the case that you should have done better and you're not promising to do better in the future.
Pace's position would make sense if the act of apologizing, of "putting things on one's ledger," were itself desirable to those who have been wronged. But the entries in a ledger are only meaningful insofar as they correspond to real assets. It always looks better to write down a larger number, but the difference between a large number backed by assets and a large number backed by the desire to write down a large number is the difference between generosity and fraud.
It's the same thing with apologies. It looks better to make a big production about how terribly sorry you are and what a big apology you're offering, but in the absence of a credible commitment to improve one's behavior, it's hard to see why the wronged party should care. Claims about "a lot of social capital with you that they can spend in other ways" can only substitute if it's true that they can spend it in other ways, and it's just really suspicious for the purported social capital to not be spendable on improving the behavior! That's the reason Pace's comrade only apologizes when he knows he did something wrong and can promise to do better—not out of stinginess, but to keep the ledger meaningful.