are excited by social membership and community identity. That proper object of such sentiments is the “biotic community,” revealed by the relatively new science of ecology. Intrinsic value in Nature The distinctiveness of environmental ethics turns on the question of non-anthropocentrism, and that question turns on the question of nature's intrinsic value, according to Callicott. For if nature's only value is its instrumental value to humans, then environmental ethics is just a species of applied ethics, similar to bioethics and business ethics, not a completely new domain of ethical theory or moral philosophy. Callicott offers a subjectivist theory of nature's intrinsic value: he does not challenge the modern classical distinction between subject and object, but rather insists that all value originates in subjects (human or otherwise) and is conferred by those subjects on various objects. In short, Callicott claims, there would be no value without valuers. These objects, however, are valued by subjects in two fundamentally different ways: instrumentally and intrinsically. Tools of various kinds epitomize the kind of objects that subjects value instrumentally; themselves and certain other human beings epitomize the kind of objects that human subjects value intrinsically. Neither kind of valuing is normally done irrationally. A rational person does not typically value a speck of dust instrumentally; nor does a rational person typically value a plastic cup intrinsically. One values various things as tools for various reasons: drills because by their means one can make neat holes; screwdrivers because by their means one can set screws. When a tool is broken or otherwise becomes useless, a rational person ceases to value it instrumentally; and often broken and useless tools are discarded as trash. One also values various things intrinsically for various good reasons. Philosophers have long provided reasons why human beings should be valued intrinsically (and thus not discarded when broken or useless). Aldo Leopold, according to Callicott, provides reasons why non-human species, biotic communities, and ecosystems should be valued intrinsically (and thus not severely compromised or destroyed). Of wildflowers and songbirds, for example, species with little instrumental value, Leopold writes in Sand County’s “The Land Ethic”: “Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance.” And later in “The Land Ethic,” Leopold directly invokes “philosophical value” — that is, what academic environmental philosophers call “intrinsic value”: “It is inconceivable to