Working out how to adapt means to ends is one characteristic function of reason. The controversial claim, associated with Hume and Weber, is that such instrumental or technical rationality exhausts the place of reason in practical affairs. On such an account, questions of ends are not subject to reason, but are non-rational matters of desire; reason therefore cannot adjudicate between conflicting ends, but only tell us how to achieve them. To many the equation of reason with instrumental reasoning is a symptom of industrial, technical societies. The ambition of Kant’s moral theory is to show how pure practical reason is possible, whereby humanity and the moral law have value independently of being seen as valuable in the light of human desire. See also disenchantment, natural law theory.