Epistemic apologies

Abstract Amongst recent work on analogies between the epistemic and the moral domains, one interaction is absent: apologies. This paper aims to fill that gap. After providing some reasons for thinking that epistemic apologies already exist in our practices, we explore the phenomena of epistemic relationships and epistemic trust. These are then used to build an account of epistemic apologies where we suggest that the function of an epistemic apology is to provide a basis for epistemic repair between an epistemic norm-violator and the victim of that violation. We illustrate how epistemic relationships can become impaired and what it takes for them to be repaired. Our hope is that this will be one step towards a cohesive picture of epistemic normativity. The resulting account also illustrates the similarity between epistemic and moral responsibility exchanges: they have the same conversational structure – consisting of the same kind of moves whose functions are special cases of a general functional schema – even as they are concerned with different kinds of failures.