Dewey once wrote:

According to Dewey, conflict in “habits” (which correspond roughly to what I have called “value commitments”) provokes inquiries aimed at the revision of such habits to eliminate the conflict. In Dewey's view, therefore, the conditions provoking inquiry concerned with modifying values are themselves generated by the diversity of habits or value commitments endorsed by agents or members of a community. Circumstances arise, often unexpectedly, in which value commitments which heretofore have cohered well in practical applications are no longer jointly applicable. That conflict-generating situations develop is not a logical consequence of value pluralism, but it is, as Dewey says, a fact.

Coming to terms with this fact intelligently does not deny value pluralism by substituting some single standard of “intrinsic” value for it. Efforts to do so are fruitless, so Dewey would argue, and are tied to an untenable quest for certainty: