 Thus, we begin with immediate valuings or prizings of things.  Such prizings have no cognitive content. When we ask whether something ought to be valued, we enter the domain of appraisal or value judgments. To appraise something is to judge it in relation to the means required to attain it, and as a means or cause of further consequences. Appraisal, then, is fundamentally about means. However, such appraisals transform our original prizings. If we discover that the cost of attaining something prized is too high, we prize it less (reduce or eliminate our tendency to go after it). If we discover that attaining it has further, disvalued, consequences, we also prize it less. If attaining it has further, prized consequences, or if the means to attain it are themselves prized, we value it even more. Now the valuing has cognitive content, and is articulately directed to that content.  Now we value or disvalue something under a description (the ice cream as cause of stomach ailment, the suit as stylish and impressive to prospective employers, the schadenfreude as despicable). The appraisal of things as means feeds back into our prizing of things as ends. 