Bestiality is immoral

“I'm going to presume, though I am open to correction, that Con and I hold to a similar morality” You are correct about the hierarchy of my values but that does not mean I will not challenge absolute claims. If you put forward a principle like “consent is required for interaction with animals” then I am going to require you to admit to all the implications of such a principle. Your idea of a ‘compelling reason’ is not necessarily anyone else’s, if you want it in law it should be an objectively compelling reason. “When we are speaking of animals, however, we cannot really know what their wills are, because animals themselves cannot know their own wills (more details on this below).” If they don’t know their own wills then there is in fact no reason to believe they have wills. While I do value ‘personal autonomy’ I only value real things as opposed to imaginary. If it is your position that there is in fact nothing that they want then there is no reason to respect the non-existent will which you are projecting onto them. I may as well worry about what my car would want if it had a will. “They are driven instead by instinct, and their cognitive functions are quite limited.” Instinct and will are not opposites. An urge is presented to the will so that if it knows no better course it will take that action. Humans are in the exact same position. “I think it safe to presume that dogs, for instance, would be a rather popular choice for zoophiles.” Indeed, man’s best friend makes a pretty good lover as well… happy coincidence. “Yet the cognitive abilities of a dog are equivalent to those of a child of 2 - 2 1/2 yrs. of age.” I won’t contest that. I would like to point out that they are able to accumulate more knowledge than most 2-2 ½ year olds though. For instance at 2 years old a human usually has about fifty words http://www.babycentre.co.uk... Including noun verb combinations. Dogs have demonstrated the ability to understand common nouns and differentiate between nouns and verbs as well. However at least one dog has learned 1000 proper nouns. http://www.nytimes.com... “This limited cognitive ability means that dogs, much like small children, cannot think out the implications of their actions or their effects in time.” They can foresee some of them as can small children. When a toddler asks for some water they know that the result will be acquisition of water which will result in a quenching of thirst. When they ask to be picked up they know the result will be that they are picked up and no longer have to walk, or they will get warm, or they will feel safer. So too with adults we think we see the implications of our actions but we are often mistaken. There is no perfect knowledge of an action or interaction. All of us can only know about it down to a certain level of abstraction and predictive accuracy. Saying the level which is common to your average adult human is the only morally relevant level of knowledge is a line in the sand that defies nature when applied to anything but reasonably well educated adult humans in modern society. “I don't wish to challenge Con's D.6 itself, but to raise the point that the "something" twice referred to in the definition encompasses far more than the immediate physical act of sex.” It can but does not need to. Let me make it simple. A dog doesn’t know about disease. If they get a disease from sex with a human I wouldn’t claim they consented to getting the disease. If it was avoidable by the human I would blame them for neglect. However that does not mean the dog failed to consent to the sex, the immediate physical act. The reason consent matters is because it is the taking of responsibility for their part of the interaction. When something is beyond another’s ability to comprehend it is impossible to offload the responsibility to them with their consent. Therefore it remains your responsibility. Zoophiles do not propose to offload the responsibility of knowing and avoiding consequences animals cannot foresee onto animals. The only thing that they are understood as consenting to is what they can consent to. The physical act as they understand it, what it means to them, what it feels like to them, etc… There is no other rational possibility or expectation. If you say they must see all risks you see, then even feeding them would be immoral since they have no idea that you have assessed the possibility that the food is poisoned and found it insignificant. Suppose you had a dog with the intelligence and communication skills of a human adult. They ask for chocolate. You say “that’s going to hurt you” and they say “I don’t care, give it anyway.” Then you may give them chocolate despite foreseeing bad consequences since the smart-dog accepted responsibility. Now let us consider a more realistic dog, you can’t tell them chocolate is bad for them. What are we obligated to do then? Simple don’t give chocolate even when they beg for it. We know they can’t foresee the bad consequences so we don’t consent to an interaction which we know will end up in pain. What you need to realize is that in both examples the dog consents to eating chocolate. Lack of consent is not what makes the second a moral problem. “The act itself has psychological, social, and physiological effects and comes with various risks that cannot be assessed by a being with severe cognitive limitations.” Then let us evaluate those risks. “There is indisputably a potential for harm in all of these areas.” There is potential for harm in many many things in life. Our ability to predict risks has only been a benefit to animals. Pointing out that animals can’t consent to things they don’t understand really has no moral implications. No more than saying that a baby can’t understand how a car works so it’s immoral to put one in a car seat makes sense. “It cannot be reasonably said that such a being has consented to these "somethings" because they can only be imagined and deliberated upon by a mind with higher cognitive functions.” It is good then that I am not saying that happens. “it is reasonable to presume that the potential for harm in general is similar for beings at similar levels of cognitive ability.” Not really. The vast majority of the potential psychological harm to children comes from the fact that as their minds grow they realize how much worse their decision making skills were when younger. They realize then how much trust they placed in those who interacted with them then and can easily feel betrayed if they think someone made a bad decision. Even the idea that it is a bad decision is a cultural phenomenon that only humans can be affected by. “I'm open to correction on that point, but it seems clear that animals suffer both physically and emotionally” When abused yes indeed they do (and your link leads to something on dog fighting). Now I don’t deny that there is abuse with a sexual dimension and even attempts to have sex which devolve into abuse but they are not inherently linked. Walking a dog can turn into abuse if you are pulling the leash faster than they can run. Feeding them can turn into abuse if you knowingly put poisons in the food. What I do insist on is that any claim of emotional or physical harm be grounded in objective observations and logic. The not-knowing of risks that the animal is not aware of is not going to perturb their psychology nor will the potential for pain they never actually experience cause them suffering. The position on sexual abuse should be based on the same principles as the rest of the animal abuse laws. The state must demonstrate neglect or pain or else they don’t have a case and it doesn’t matter if you’re in Narnia (where animals can talk) or not. “Animals and small children, as I have argued, either do not possess a will” Then I suggest you meet some animals and children. I have done both, and can assure you they do possess wills. This allusion to having a will but not knowing you have a will is vacuous, it cannot be evaluated. “What we think of as a will or the capacity to self-determine is correlated with higher cognitive abilities that these beings do not posses.” Then just as my premise implies we have no duty to respect non-existent self-determination. “All of the same can be said for animals... but I don't see that this changes the nature of our responsibilities towards them.” I agree it doesn’t, provided that you want the animal to have a fulfilling happy life as far as it can within the confines of nature. As an aside I do not believe that the instinctual payload is actually that much higher for most large mammals, that is an unfounded anthropocentric view. The fundamental difference between an instinct and a decision is that instinct can’t be changed yet we have empirical evidence that large mammals can adapt practically every single aspect of their behavior. They are driven by instincts as we are, but they choose the best way to pursue the values their instincts give them. “Given what we know about the potential for harm inherent in sexual relationships between cognitively advanced and cognitively limited beings” I know very little about such inherent potential. You are going to have to make a case for that. “The morally correct relationship ... is the parent-child relationship” It is trying to fit animals into a human relationship role and not recognizing that they are different from humans and warrant a different social relation that leads to the irrational disgust in the first place. There is no potential harm added by the inclusion of humans into the natural sexual behavior of animals. Trying to fit them into the 'child' niche lends the idea that if they have sex it’s only because somebody came along and tricked them into it. That is incorrect. A much greater risk of psychological harm is incurred by ignoring their desires and will than the equivalent of a few bumps and bruises every once in a while.