Abstract

IntroductionThe possibility of prospective apologies has been ignored and conditional apologies have typically been thought to be insincere, deceptive, or at the very least, not meaningful. In large part this is because authors have attended to a particular suite of psychological features of those who issue an apology, and the presence of this suite of features has been taken to provide evidence that an apology is meaningful, while the absence of said psychological features is taken to provide evidence that the apology is not meaningful. Since there is prima facie good reason to suppose that no agent issuing a conditional or prospective apology could have (all) of these psychological features, it has been largely assumed that such apologies cannot be meaningful. This paper argues that this is a mistake. More careful consideration of prospective and conditional apologies suggests that they can be meaningful. That, in turn, suggests that we should look more closely at the role of these f