Imagine that you meet an 18th century altruist. They tell you “So, I’ve been thinking about whether or not to eat meat. Do you know whether animals have souls?” How would you answer, assuming you actually do want to be helpful?

One option is to spend a lot of time explaining why “soul” isn’t actually the thing in the territory they care about, and talk about moral patienthood and theories of welfare and moral status. If they haven’t walked away from you in the first thirty seconds this may even work, though I wouldn’t bet on it.

Another option is to just say “yes” or “no”, to try and answer what their question was pointing at. If they ask further questions, you can either dig in deeper and keep translating your real answers into their ontology or at some point try to retarget their questions’ pointers toward concepts that [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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