This is a valid point and it actually makes my statement stronger. Simply understanding what people like/dislike may not be considered ‘true empathy’, but caring about what they like/dislike certainly is.
If I make chicken soup for my friend when he’s sick, and then I feel good because I can see I’ve made him happy, that’s empathy. If I give $100 to a charity that helps someone I will never see, that’s not empathy. The reward there isn’t “I see someone happy and I feel their joy as my own.” It’s knowing abstractly that I’ve done the right thing. I’ve done both, and the emotional aspects have virtually nothing in common.
All forms of empathy must necessarily be indirect. When you see your friend happy, you don’t directly percieve his happiness. Instead, you pick up on cues like facial expression and movements. You extract features that correspond to your mental model of human happiness. Let me make this clear and explain why it’s relevant to the discussion.
Let’s say your friend is asleep. You make him friend chicken soup, leave it on the table, and go to work. He later sends you a single text, “Thanks, the chicken soup made me really happy.” This puts a smile on your face. I’m pretty sure you would consider that the first form of empathy, even though you never saw your friend happy. Indeed, the only indication of his happiness is several characters on a phone display.
Now let’s take this further. Let’s say every time you make your friend chicken soup it makes him happy, so that you can predict with confidence that making him chicken soup will always make him happy. Next time you make him chicken soup, do you even need to see him or get a text from him? No, you already know it’s making him happy. Is this type of empathy the first kind or the second kind?
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.
This is a valid point and it actually makes my statement stronger. Simply understanding what people like/dislike may not be considered ‘true empathy’, but caring about what they like/dislike certainly is.
If I make chicken soup for my friend when he’s sick, and then I feel good because I can see I’ve made him happy, that’s empathy. If I give $100 to a charity that helps someone I will never see, that’s not empathy. The reward there isn’t “I see someone happy and I feel their joy as my own.” It’s knowing abstractly that I’ve done the right thing. I’ve done both, and the emotional aspects have virtually nothing in common.
All forms of empathy must necessarily be indirect. When you see your friend happy, you don’t directly percieve his happiness. Instead, you pick up on cues like facial expression and movements. You extract features that correspond to your mental model of human happiness. Let me make this clear and explain why it’s relevant to the discussion.
Let’s say your friend is asleep. You make him friend chicken soup, leave it on the table, and go to work. He later sends you a single text, “Thanks, the chicken soup made me really happy.” This puts a smile on your face. I’m pretty sure you would consider that the first form of empathy, even though you never saw your friend happy. Indeed, the only indication of his happiness is several characters on a phone display.
Now let’s take this further. Let’s say every time you make your friend chicken soup it makes him happy, so that you can predict with confidence that making him chicken soup will always make him happy. Next time you make him chicken soup, do you even need to see him or get a text from him? No, you already know it’s making him happy. Is this type of empathy the first kind or the second kind?
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.