Seems pretty obvious - empathy has nothing to do with souls. Empathy is a rather imprecise instinct that we apply to things that we perceive as being like us. Depending on how we grow up, it can be expansive, including all animals, or narrow, including only people of our immediate tribe of ethnically similar co-religionists.
We empathize with this thing for one reason, it’s movements are very human in appearance. That’s it. Empathy isn’t some great, sophisticated thing. It’s powerful, and critical to our society, but it isn’t a genius.
