reason, or "nature," considered as giving humans a fixed telos [intrinsic end].Philosophers label a "fixed reference point outside of conduct' a "natural kind," and presume it to have eternal existence knowable in itself without being experienced. Natural kinds are intrinsic valuations presumed to be "mind-independent" and "theory-independent." Dewey grants the existence of "reality" apart from human experience, but denied that it is structured as intrinsically real natural kinds. Instead, he sees reality as functional continuity of ways-of-acting, rather than as interaction among pre-structured intrinsic kinds. Humans may intuit static kinds and qualities, but such private experience cannot warrant inferences or valuations about mind-independent reality. Reports or maps of perceptions or intuitions are never equivalent to territories mapped. People reason daily about what they ought to do and how they ought to do it. Inductively, they discover sequences of efficient means that achieve consequences. Once an end is reached—a problem solved—reasoning turns to new conditions of means-end relations. Valuations that ignore consequence-determining conditions cannot coordinate behavior to solve real problems; they contaminate rationality.Value judgments have the form: if one acted in a particular way (or valued this object), then certain consequences would ensue, which would be valued. The difference between an apparent and a real good [means or end], between an unreflectively and a reflectively valued good, is captured by its value [valuation of goodness] not just as immediately experienced in isolation, but in view of its wider consequences and how they are valued.… So viewed, value judgments are tools for discovering how to live a better life, just as scientific hypotheses are tools for uncovering new information about the world.In brief, Dewey rejects the traditional belief that judging things as good in themselves, apart from existing means-end relations, can be rational. The sole rational criterion is instrumental value. Each valuation is conditional but, cumulatively, all are developmental—and therefore socially-legitimate solutions of problems. Competent instrumental valuations treat the "function of consequences as necessary tests of the validity of propositions, provided these consequences are operationally instituted and are such as to resolve the specific problems evoking the operations." J. Fagg Foster John Fagg Foster made John Dewey's rejection of intrinsic value more operational by showing that its competent use rejects the legitimacy of utilitarian ends—satisfaction of whatever ends individuals adopt. It requires recognizing developmental sequences of means and ends. Utilitarians hold that individual wants cannot be rationally justified; they are intrinsically worthy