Hi Ken:
I agree the apologizing for accidents presents an interesting problem, and I spend a few pages in the book thinking about it in the context of blame and moral causation. I'll except a few paragraphs that might be fun to discuss, but see the book for lots of examples (including some juicy bits from Montaigne and Homer).
对于非过失事故的道歉通常否认故意，因此不接受责任。这是显而易见的，例如，如果我错过了前面提到的(这是一个持续的例子)和我的朋友的晚餐会议，因为我在去餐厅的路上，一颗流星击中了我的头。当我决定不吃晚餐而去看电影时，这个选择使我对随后的伤害负有责任和责任。然而，我不选择让流星击中我。因此，我们不愿意认为是我对等着我的朋友造成了伤害，因为我没有做错任何事情。一种自然行为，而不是我的意志，吸收了因果责任。如果我在被流星击中后试图道歉并接受指责，我希望我的朋友能明白，她所遭受的任何伤害都不是我的错，因此道歉并接受指责是不合适的。In this respect, Walt Whitman seems to consider himself a force of nature like a meteor when he declares in Leaves of Grass:
I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize?.
These examples also mark the difference between being excused, justified, and forgiven. In Anglo-American criminal law since the early nineteenth century, ?excuses admit that the deed may be wrong, but excuse the actor because conditions suggest that he is not responsible for his deed.? Thus even though an act is wrong, blame shifts away from this actor. A valid justification (like self-defense) establishes that there was no wrongdoing. Forgiveness, as I discuss in some detail later, takes many forms but typically pardons me in some sense after finding me guilty.
Common usage does not always conform to the legal definitions of the terms. If an injury was accidental, then an apology does not give the victim a reason to believe that it will not happen again because the threat is out of the apologizer?s control. Here we can notice the subtle differences between someone saying ?excuse me? and offering an apology. When requesting that you ?excuse me,? I typically assert that the harm or inconvenience I caused you is somehow justified and I seek your recognition of the legitimacy of this claim. According to legal concepts, I should probably say ?I am justified? rather than ?excuse me,? but the former sounds abrasively self-righteous. If I serve tables in a crowded restaurant and need to carry a tray through a line of customers, asking patrons to excuse me as I bump into them would seem appropriate because they would understand that I am not committing a trespass against them. My actions are justified and I seek recognition and tacit permission rather than forgiveness.
这并不是说道德上的错误一定是故意的，或者道德上应受谴责的故意行为不会导致事故。假设我错过了和朋友的会议，因为我前一天晚上喝了太多的酒，忘记设置闹钟，睡过头了。我并不想取消我们的约会，但我没有遵守社交约定。人们很容易认为错过约会是一场意外，但没有设置闹钟与被流星击中不同，因为结果可以直接追溯到我没有履行我的责任。我也应该预见到前一天晚上的过度放纵可能会导致这些后果。当无意的疏忽造成伤害时，我们可以为此道歉并接受指责。如果我在路上小心翼翼地开车，一个钉子扎破了轮胎，导致我的车转向并与另一辆车相撞，我可能只会对那些承担这次事故的代价的人表示同情，因为这不是我故意或疏忽的道德错误造成的。我没做错什么。然而，如果我是在醉酒或超速驾驶的情况下撞倒了钉子，我应该为此道歉并接受指责。如果不确定自己是否犯了道德上的过失或发生了事故，就会在找借口和道歉之间左右为难。 The phrase ?I?m sorry, but?? may fill this interim. If a legitimate excuse follows the ?but,? then an apology accepting blame may not be warranted.
This may illuminate another sort of exchange. Suppose I preface an apology to a friend by first explaining that just before I wronged her I missed the train, my migraine headaches struck, and I learned that she had insulted me the day prior. I continue to claim, however, that all of this is irrelevant; I was wrong for insulting her and I accept blame for doing so. If such information is irrelevant, why do we include it so often? I suspect this results from our ambiguity about the nature of apologies, which leaves us in a sort of penitential purgatory. On the one hand, we do not want to accept blame and hope the injured party will excuse us or find our actions justified. Hence we offer some evidence in support of this strategy. On the other hand, we realize that such information might appear as an attempt to diminish our responsibility and that this cuts against our ability to fully apologize. We offer the information to the offender for her to consider the possibility of our reduced agency or moral justification, but we then denounce it as irrelevant and affirm our agency so that we can try that strategy as well. In other words, we play both sides by asserting that we might not need to apologize, but if that argument is not convincing we will apologize anyway.
The factual components of apologetic statements often leave victims with insufficient information to evaluate whether harm was intentional, negligent, or accidental. U.S. National Park Director Bob Stanton, for example, offered this statement after a fire intentionally set by his agency to manage a forest grew out of control and destroyed more than two hundred homes: ?I want to express on behalf of the National Park Service our deepest apology to the men and women of Los Alamos and all of New Mexico.? We are unclear if the destruction was truly accidental (perhaps because lightning or an unforeseeable wind contributed to the blaze) or if the agency was somehow negligent and thus morally culpable for the blaze. Until we know more, the moral status of the apology remains opaque. We can also notice here that I need not intend the precise harm in order to accept blame for it, for example if I aim to shoot person A but misfire and shoot person B. Shooting B would be accidental, but I have still committed a moral trespass because presumably I should not be shooting at anyone. I should, therefore, distribute my culpability to unintended consequences. In such a case, I would owe apologies to both A and B, and the apologies would differ in light of the mental states attached to the distinct wrongs of intentionally trying to shoot A and shooting B while aiming for A. Matters would be different still if I am a police officer with moral justification for shooting A but B unforeseeably jumps into my line of fire. If I have not done anything wrong, I cannot convincingly accept blame for B?s injury.
这让我们想到了在道歉声明中转移道德责任的最常见的修辞策略:告诫性断言? ?虽然我稍后会考虑道歉动机的重要性，但在这里我关心的是冒犯者?S描述激发行为的精神状态，据称造成了审查中的伤害。许多违规者试图否认故意，以减轻责任，例如声称他们没有故意。t的意思吗?造成的危害。如果我没有故意造成伤害，那么这似乎是一个意外，我不承担道德责任。我发现这种策略出现的频率相当惊人，一些最恶劣的例子应该会让我想起更多。美国助理检察官肯尼斯·泰勒在提到来自肯塔基东部的潜在陪审员是文盲的洞穴居民后，?断言该评论并非是对地区的诋毁。在某种程度上，它被误解为，?他解释道，“我道歉。” After MSNBC commentator Michael Savage stated to a caller, ?Oh, you?re one of the sodomites?[y]ou should get AIDS and die, you pig,? he offered the following: ?If my comments brought pain to anyone I certainly did not intend for this to happen and apologize for any such reaction. I especially appeal to my many listeners in the gay community to accept my apologies for any inadvertent insults which may have occurred.? In both instances the offenders attempt to convert a clear and grievous moral trespass into an accident for which we should not blame them. Such instances leave us to wonder what the offenders? true intentions could possibly have been if not to cause offense. If not to berate the potential jurors and the caller, why would Taylor or Savage utter these slurs? Rarely do offenders offer a window onto their allegedly misunderstood mental state and provide a convincing alternative intention. This also reminds us that the mental state of the offender before and at the time of the offense holds significance not only because it bears on her moral responsibility, but also because it fills in important details about the factual record. The offender?s mental states can provide some of the most important historical facts that a victim seeks to understand, and in this respect the analysis of the offender?s mind can be an important component of corroborating the historical record as discussed earlier.
一个相关的策略是声称伤害是由于一个偶然的用词导致的，我们应该原谅违法者。想想前众议院共和党领袖迪克·阿梅?在提到公开的同性恋众议员巴尼·弗兰克(Barney Fag)后，他发表了声明。媒体和其他媒体都在报道这件事，好像这是故意的，但事实并非如此。我再说一遍，这不过是另一个人无意的发音错误?S的名字听起来像什么，但实际上不是。弗兰克?’s的回答表达了一种适当的怀疑:我的名字有很多种发音错误的方式，但我认为这是最不常见的。特伦特·洛特参议员之后?斯特罗姆·瑟蒙德的明显支持?1948年在瑟蒙德的庆祝活动上发表的种族隔离宣言?在2002年的100岁生日时，洛特曾多次将这场争议归咎于“用词不当”、“?” explaining that ?his words were wrong? and ?conveyed things [he] did not intend.? Tom DeLay has blamed his offenses on speaking ?in an inartful way,? and Senator Orrin Hatch described one of his offenses as a ?mix-up in words.? Representative John Cooksey cited an errant ?choice of words? as the culprit in his stating that civil liberties should be suspended for anyone wearing a ?diaper on his head.? ?If I offended Arab Americans, I regret my choice of words,? Cooksey stated, as if he questioned whether his slur offended anyone. Representative Robert Doran claimed that he was ?not even aware that those words had come together in a sentence? after calling a Soviet news commentator ?a disloyal, betraying little Jew.? In a further attempt to separate the core of their moral self from the wrongdoing, Lott and others often describe the accident as a ?mistake of the head ? and not the heart.?
Attempts to convert moral offenses into unintentional accidents seem especially common when the accused wishes to explain that, despite appearances, she is ?not a racist.? [lots of examples in the book of this] In each of these examples, the offenders attempt to dissociate racist behavior from their ?true? innocent selves by claiming that the offense was unintentional, accidental, or otherwise not a reflection of their ?hearts.? Offenders often fail to accept blame for their actions when resorting to this tactic, instead attempting to convert moral errors into morally neutral accidents within the very language of their apologies. I should also mention here how many offenses of this sort result from attempts at humor where the offender takes imprudent risks and then attempts to limit the damage caused by her poor judgment by claiming that she ?was only joking.?
Finally, we should note how these issues bear considerable importance for a Kantian given the centrality of intentions when assessing the moral worth of an act. Although a utilitarian may find the offender?s mental state of secondary relevance compared with the consequences of her actions, the deontologist should believe that intentions are essential to assigning blame and evaluating the moral status of an apology.

这个关于道歉的节目征集了收到的最糟糕道歉的电话或电子邮件，但没有人提供。我和一个脾气不好的朋友在普吉特湾附近的圣胡安群岛的苏西亚岛附近航行时发生了那次事故。引擎出了问题，所以我的朋友关掉了引擎，然后专注地分析引擎灯和它们所代表的意义。我注意到，关掉引擎后，我们不仅在靠近一些岩石，而且另一艘船正径直朝我们驶来。我开始告诉我的朋友这件事，但他生气地对我喊道，他很忙，不要打扰他。我坚持着，我们把船移开了。后来我告诉他，我不喜欢他对我大吼大叫。他的道歉是:“我很抱歉让你这么想。”在我看来，这根本不是道歉。向一个道歉的人道歉就像说:“我很抱歉你不讲道理，会有这样的感觉。” It's a non-apology, because, in Nick Smith's terms, there is no acceptance of blame.

我没听到节目。我只是偶然发现了这个网站。但是如果一个人什么都没做却一直在道歉(至少说“对不起”)，那该怎么办呢?

Long time reader, brand new poster - just wanted to say hi for now :) I found you guys throughhttp://google.com>good old google