If you think I'm contradicting myself, then I didn't know what "abstraction" was referring to in "sophisticated abstraction". (FWIW, it's pretty difficult to review the conversation and formulate good responses on mobile, since all I can see easily without switching back and forth is the comment I am replying to). I think it's "sophisticated" to have the language and philosophy required to follow a moral system that you prioritize over your own instincts—in this case, the prioritization of members of your species. I don't think it's "sophisticated" to not attempt to maximally exploit everything around me for even the most modest benefit to the deteriment of all else. Maybe I have too high an opinion of people. Maybe it's just a consequence of scale.

I see empathy alone as being much more basic, requiring only a very low-level "theory of mind", likely arising from the type of evolutionary pressure that leads to social species. I would be surprised to learn that was a recent adaptation in our evolutionary line. Maybe most species have it "off by default", if you consider the "default" to be a constant state of duress and resource scarcity.

This is not true.

We literally discovered a 32,000 year old burial site where a hunter put a mammoth bone in their deceased dogs mouth when they buried him.

https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/animal-health/our-respo...

That's not utilitarian, to give funerary care.

Another grave site in Germany from 14,000 years ago had a dog buried with a man and a woman, treating it as a family member.

We literally have had fur babies since before we had civilization.

Once you get there, there's far more evidence: ancient Greeks burying pets and writing inscriptions about how they loved them, dogs and baboons were kept as pets in ancient Egypt, and given names, which was a big deal in Egyptian religion, and wasn't done for utility animals at all.