I’d call it the first kind, because it actually causes warm-fuzzy-happy feelings in me. My emotion reflects the emotion I reasonably believe my friend is feeling. Whereas the satisfaction in knowing I have done the right thing for someone far away whom I don’t know and will never meet is qualitatively more like my satisfaction in knowing that my shoes are tied symmetrically, or that the document I have just written is free of misspellings. I’ve done The Right Thing, and that’s good in an abstract aesthetic way, but none of my feelings reflect those I would believe, on reflection, that the recipient of the good deed would now be feeling. It doesn’t put a smile on my face the way helping my friend does.
Well, what you say you feel is subjective (as is what I say I feel) but when I personally donate to charity it’s because helping people—even if I don’t directly see the results of my help—makes me happy. If not the ‘warm fuzzy feeling’, at least a feeling comparable to that of helping my friend. That is my subective feeling.
I’d call it the first kind, because it actually causes warm-fuzzy-happy feelings in me. My emotion reflects the emotion I reasonably believe my friend is feeling. Whereas the satisfaction in knowing I have done the right thing for someone far away whom I don’t know and will never meet is qualitatively more like my satisfaction in knowing that my shoes are tied symmetrically, or that the document I have just written is free of misspellings. I’ve done The Right Thing, and that’s good in an abstract aesthetic way, but none of my feelings reflect those I would believe, on reflection, that the recipient of the good deed would now be feeling. It doesn’t put a smile on my face the way helping my friend does.
Well, what you say you feel is subjective (as is what I say I feel) but when I personally donate to charity it’s because helping people—even if I don’t directly see the results of my help—makes me happy. If not the ‘warm fuzzy feeling’, at least a feeling comparable to that of helping my friend. That is my subective feeling.