over two thousand years, the…most influential and authoritatively orthodox tradition…has been devoted to the problem of a purely cognitive certification (perhaps by revelation, perhaps by intuition, perhaps by reason) of the antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty, and goodness.… The crisis in contemporary culture, the confusions and conflicts in it, arise from a division of authority. Scientific [instrumental inquiry seems to tell one thing, and traditional beliefs valuations about ends and ideals that have authority over conduct tell us something quite different.… As long as the notion persists that knowledge is a disclosure of reality…prior to and independent of knowing, and that knowing is independent of a purpose to control the quality of experienced objects, the failure of natural science to disclose significant values [valuations in its objects will come as a shock.Finding no evidence of "antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty, and goodness," Dewey argues that both efficient and legitimate goods are discovered in the continuity of human experience:Dewey's ethics replaces the goal of identifying an ultimate end or supreme principle that can serve as a criterion of ethical evaluation with the goal of identifying a method for improving our value judgments. Dewey argued that ethical inquiry is of a piece with empirical inquiry more generally.… This pragmatic approach requires that we locate the conditions of warrant for our value judgments in human conduct itself, not in any a priori fixed reference point outside of conduct, such as in God's commands, Platonic Forms, pure reason, or "nature," considered as giving humans a fixed telos 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."