Bestiality is immoral

I'm going to presume, though I am open to correction, that Con and I hold to a similar morality, since he highlighted the importance of consent in his list of definitions (D.6). That is to say, I believe - broadly speaking, of course - that personal autonomy ranks near the top of our hierarchy of values. Therefore, for one being to violate another without a compelling reason is immoral, a transgression of our shared value system. To violate a being is to act upon them against their will, or as we may also say, without their consent. Whether or not harm is actually inflicted is irrelevant, though the moral stakes are higher when harm is a possibility or inevitability. That is to say, not all violations are of equal moral gravity. 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). They are driven instead by instinct, and their cognitive functions are quite limited. I think it safe to presume that dogs, for instance, would be a rather popular choice for zoophiles. Yet the cognitive abilities of a dog are equivalent to those of a child of 2 - 2 1/2 yrs. of age. "According to several behavioral measures... dogs' mental abilities are close to a human child age 2 to 2.5 years." http://www.sciencedaily.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. Thus we come to the matter of "consent." 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. 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. There is indisputably a potential for harm in all of these areas. http://www.asca.org.au... 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. While it likely isn't the case that the effects of sexual abuse are the same for human children as they are for animals, it is reasonable to presume that the potential for harm in general is similar for beings at similar levels of cognitive ability. I'm open to correction on that point, but it seems clear that animals suffer both physically and emotionally: http://www.psychologytoday.com... We must also address the issue of rape, D.3 above. For while it is all well and good to establish that an animal cannot meaningfully consent to sexual activity, D.3 holds that a rape (or violation, as I put it above) can only be inflicted upon " an organism capable of intelligent self-determination." In other words, a being with a will. Animals and small children, as I have argued, either do not possess a will or cannot know what their will is or act upon it. 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. On these points, Con and I agree. However, I would argue for what I call a reasonably presumed best interest for animals and small children, a best interest to which any being with a will would reasonably be expected to conform. This presumption is virtually the foundation of parenthood; parents are held responsible by society for acting in the best interests of their children. Among many notions of best interest, I would include that they are responsible for minimizing the potential for harm to their children. All adults are held to a similar if lesser standard with respect to all children. A small child cannot know, or can only have a dim idea of at best, that its best interest lies in holding mommy's hand on the sidewalk of a busy street instead of playing in traffic. The responsibility belongs to the parent. As children mature, the balance of responsibilities shift until the child becomes an adult (and, as an aside, I think that ought to be socially recognized sooner than it is). This arrangement is justifiable on solidly empirical grounds, provided that we agree to the basic proposition that it is good to live and bad to die senselessly. All of the same can be said for animals, in spite of some very sophisticated instincts and innate characteristics that allow them to survive much more than a human child would be able to withstand. Of course they will not mature into beings with higher cognitive functions, but I don't see that this changes the nature of our responsibilities towards them. Given what we know about the potential for harm inherent in sexual relationships between cognitively advanced and cognitively limited beings, then, I think we can say that the presumed best interest of animals excludes these types of relationships. The morally correct relationship between a cognitively advanced being and a cognitively limited being is the parent-child relationship (or some functional equivalent), the essence of which is to decrease, and not increase through sexual intercourse, the potential for harm for the cognitively limited being. I'll close by noting that I reject the radical argument that all sexual relationships between beings of "unequal power" are rape - a popular feminist and even anti-bestiality argument. Please do not mistake my argument for that one. Cognitive capacity for meaningful consent, with "meaningful" understood as consent in view of the potential risks, is my standard. Beings with unequal power can both possess this capacity, but no animal can.