The IPBES Framework aims to allow room for a plurality of values and recently proposed a move from `Ecosystem Services’ to `Nature’s Contributions to People’. O’Connor and Kenter (2019) argue that both approaches still disregard nature as an end in itself. Therefore, they propose a new conceptualisation of `intrinsic value’ and a new approach, labelled the `Life Framework of Values’. This work is highly relevant, but we argue that there are some fundamental conceptual problems with their current account, in particular with the conceptualisation of intrinsic value, relational value, and their category of `living as’. We argue that the changes made to the underlying framework of O’Neill add more confusion than clarification, that it is better to return to the original framework and to focus energy on making that framework applicable.

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The point of departure of any ethical theory is the anthropological fact that normally developed humans must lead their own lives themselves. This means that their conduct is neither programmed nor determined by instincts. Human beings must on every occasion engage the circumstances of a practical situation by their own choice and decision. Even when they find themselves delivered over to the stimuli and powers of particular circumstances in a completely passive manner, this does not occur in the way that it does for a robot, but rather, on the basis of a background of an essential possibility that they can conduct themselves otherwise than they are now behaving. Where there is the possibility of a choice, then the question inevitably arises regarding the principle of the choice. On what do we base our decision to choose one possibility rather than another? We can let fate decide, we can consult astrological charts, we can appeal to an authority, or we can try to find out what we truly want, what are our deepest desires and what choice agrees best with these desires. Finally, we can also inquire into what decision is the objectively correct and rational one, i.e. which decision is good independent of our subjective preferences. This latter case, of course, presupposes a standard of the objectively good and rational, in regard to which we can be responsible for and evaluate our decisions as well as our ensuing actions.The consideration that we, as normally developed humans, must ourselves lead our lives, that our lives do not make sense and take shape without us, does not merely mean that our behavior is not determined in regard to particular details in the manifold changes of the practical situations within which we find ourselves, but rather, in principle ours is a self-determined behavior. Furthermore, it means that our life as a unified whole is in principle self-determined. When I live for the moment, i.e., in a wanton and random

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