When you say “PR concerns”, do you mean “every social aspect of human communication”? If so, then the point is exactly that people arguing the factual correctness of an apology are ignoring every social aspect of human communication.
No, that’s not really what I mean. I mean that I generally doubt these public apologies are generally able to give people the emotional reconciliation that they desire.
They can provide a few things, presumably including PR damage mitigation, a sincere account of their thinking, and perhaps some amount of reconciliation.
My criticism of your post is that it seems intent on optimizing for only one of those—indeed considering it entirely sufficient for a “good apology” without considering how these things trade off, nor considering what we might normatively want an apology to do. In my view, a sincere account of someone’s beliefs is very valuable.
When you say “PR concerns”, do you mean “every social aspect of human communication”? If so, then the point is exactly that people arguing the factual correctness of an apology are ignoring every social aspect of human communication.
No, that’s not really what I mean. I mean that I generally doubt these public apologies are generally able to give people the emotional reconciliation that they desire.
They can provide a few things, presumably including PR damage mitigation, a sincere account of their thinking, and perhaps some amount of reconciliation.
My criticism of your post is that it seems intent on optimizing for only one of those—indeed considering it entirely sufficient for a “good apology” without considering how these things trade off, nor considering what we might normatively want an apology to do. In my view, a sincere account of someone’s beliefs is very valuable.