An action may be: instrumentally rational (zweckrational), that is, determined by expectations as to the behavior of objects in the environment of other human beings; these expectations are used as "conditions" or "means" for the attainment of the actor's own rationally pursued and calculated ends; value-rational (wertrational), that is, determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success; [1]: 24–5 ... the more the value to which action is oriented is elevated to the status of an absolute [intrinsic] value, the more "irrational" in this [instrumental] sense the corresponding action is.
[2]: II:301 As Weber studied human action in religious, governmental, and economic settings, he found peoples' reasoning evolving and often contaminating itself by converting conditional means into unconditional ends.
A rain-dance mistakenly thought to work instrumentally becomes a prescribed ritual action proclaimed to be permanently legitimate regardless of actual consequences.
[1]: 25, 33, 401–2, 422–4, 576–7 [2]: 48 Similar contamination occurs in modern societies when instrumental actions that actually "work" temporarily become accepted as intrinsically efficient, converting context-dependent action-as-means into permanently legitimate action-as-end.
Weber knew (and personally regretted) that European societies had been rejecting supernatural rules of behavior since the Age of Enlightenment.
[1]: 65 [2]: I:159, 195, 244 [4]: 11–17 Jürgen Habermas quoted Weber expressing dismay at this destruction of an intrinsic moral compass for human societies: Wherever rational, empirical knowledge has consistently brought about the disenchantment of the world and its transformation into a causal mechanism, a definitive pressure arises against the claims of the ethical postulate that the world is a divinely ordered, ... somehow ethically meaningful cosmos.
[6]: 51–5, 698 His prime example of value-rational action was institutionalised rituals found in all societies: culturally prescribed but eternally legitimate ends.
This involves the fundamental elements of "ends" "means," and "conditions" of rational action and the norm of the intrinsic means-end relationship.
Despite coining new names, Jürgen Habermas followed Parsons in using Weber's classic kinds of rational action to explain human behavior.
[12] James Gouinlock expressed Habermas's proposal as follows: Human action predicated on individual reason yields no universally valid [value-rational] norms.
[13]: 269 Habermas argued that language communities share a background of value-rational symbols that constitutes "a normative context recognized as legitimate".
[2]: 11–13 Shared understanding produced by direct communication creates a collective consciousness of instrumental knowledge—technological reality—and of moral rules—value reality—capable of generating prescribed patterns of correlated behavior.
[2]: II:236, 310 [10]: 235–8 To the extent that methodological-rational conduct of life gets uprooted, purposive-rational action orientations become self-sufficient; technically intelligent [instrumental] adaptation to the objectified milieu of large organizations is combined with a utilitarian calculation of the actor's own interests.
... rationality is an affair of the relation of means and consequences, not of fixed [value-rational] first principles as ultimate premises ...[15]: 9 Dewey argued that singular human actions cannot be explained by isolated motives, as Weber sought to do.
Every action is embedded in biological and cultural environments, which humans continuously reshape instrumentally to promote developmental patterns of behavior: efficient driving adapts constantly to road conditions.
Social deliberation is a process of sharing concerns; exchanging proposals for concerted activity; considering, modifying, uniting them ..., and trying to achieve as much consensus as possible regarding which one finally to act upon.
In framing ends-in-view, it is unreasonable to set up those which have no connection with available means and without reference to the obstacles standing in the way for attaining the end.