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 or end, between an unreflectively and a reflectively valued good, is captured by its value 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."