ENVR 203: Animal Personhood and Environmental Ethics

Vocabulary terms and definitions from the ENVR 203 lecture on animal personhood, sentientism, legal status, animal welfare, animal rights, and Mi’kmaq philosophical traditions.

Sentience

The faculty of sense, feeling, or consciousness.

Sentientism

A value theory arguing that all animals capable of experiencing pleasure, happiness, or satisfaction possess intrinsic value, with no other organisms possessing value except possibly instrumental value.

Utilitarianism

A consequentialist ethical framework that judges actions by their consequences, defining the morally right action as the one that produces the greatest overall happiness, well-being, or benefit for the greatest number.

Animal Liberation (Singer, 1973)

A foundational text by Peter Singer drawing on Jeremy Bentham's question 'can they suffer?' to challenge speciesist practices and argue for the equal consideration of interests.

Animal Welfare

An approach grounded in the view that animals are sentient beings capable of pain and pleasure; it accepts that humans may use animals, provided suffering is minimized and human responsibilities are upheld.

Animal Rights

A framework seeking legal protections and moral status for animals based on their autonomy and self-determination, setting absolute limits on human use regardless of human benefit.

Five Fundamental Freedoms

A core animal welfare standard ensuring freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition; physical discomfort; pain, injury, and disease; fear and distress; and the freedom to express normal patterns of behaviour.

Bill No. 54 (Quebec, 2015)

Legislation that enacted the Animal Welfare and Safety Act and modified the Civil Code of Quebec to recognize animals as sensitive beings, while explicitly excluding farm and research animals.

Article 898.1 of the Civil Code of Quebec

A provision introduced by Bill No. 54 establishing that animals are not property, but beings endowed with sensitivity that have biological imperatives.

Legal Personhood

The status of counting in the eyes of the law, granting an entity rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability, rather than being treated as an invisible 'thing.'

Legal Things

Entities that are 'invisible' to judges and lack rights, protections, or standing in law, a category that historically included enslaved people, women, and children.

Mi’kmaq Animal Perspective

A philosophical and ethical tradition described by Robinson that frames human-animal relations as mutual dependence and friendship, recognizing that all beings share kinship and experience life in the first-person.

Kisu’lk

The Creator in the Mi’kmaq tradition, with whom both humans and non-human animals maintain an ongoing relationship.

The Gift of the Animal

An Indigenous understanding of willing animal sacrifice for human sustenance that obligates humans to show honor, offer thanksgiving and prayer, ensure total utilization, and maintain conditions for animal communities to thrive.