In this section it will be demonstrated that there are certain goals implicit in human action, which may or may not correspond to the explicit goals of human beings. Moreover, the standards implied by those goals correspond quite well to common usage of the value concepts just mentioned. In other words, there is a crucial aspect of what is—an awareness of which is essential to our understanding of reality itself—which we can identify as what ought to be. The resulting concepts of value will be fundamental to our understanding of human action.

In order to appreciate the full significance of these concepts, however, it helps first to see how they apply in a context broader than human action—that is, how they pertain not only to humans, but also to other functional entities. We will then examine why the explicit goals that human beings pursue (which we will call "subjective values") often diverge from the implicit goals of their action ("objective values"). We will also analyze the relationship between the individual and society in order to determine the source of human purpose and to identify the acting entity in human action.