Values, purposes, and feelings derive from this same conceptual process and therefore can arise only within an individual. Here our language is especially apt to mislead us. If thousands of individuals feel emotional responses to an act of terrorism, we sometimes speak of a "shared feeling" of revulsion. Yet clearly what we mean is that revulsion is the natural response of any sane individual to the slaughter of innocents, and hence that each of us responds to news of the event in a similar manner. (A less mentally healthy individual may respond quite differently.)

Our faculties for sensing feelings in others are highly developed, involving not just language but many subtle sensory cues. Often Person X may sense fear or affection or some other emotion in Person Y, by means that X may not immediately be able to identify consciously. If X feels a kinship of values with Y, then he or she may come to feel a similar sense of fear or affection. Such a sympathetic response, however, is by no means guaranteed. For example, if X is certain that Y's fear is unjustified (and if that certainty is well-integrated, penetrating deeply into X's subconscious), then X will feel no "sympathetic" fear. A person's feelings, in short, can be imputed to his or her own thoughts and past thinking (with rare exceptions, as noted on p. 1.3:84).