 Second, persons are presumed to be instrumentally rational and so capable of understanding how the satisfaction of their desires can be helped by cooperative social interaction. Contractarians characterize practical rationality instrumentally, subjectively, and preferentially. Acting rationally entails maximizing satisfaction of one’s own subjective preferences. Contractarians rely on the crucial fact about humans that we are able to cooperate to produce more than each working alone, thus making it rational to cooperate under at least some terms. Self-interest and rationality imply a desire to cooperate provided that cooperators can do so without sacrificing their self-interest. The desire to benefit from cooperation in turn makes persons rationally concerned about their reputations for adhering to the moral norms that make cooperation possible and rational. (See  feminist perspectives on the self  (Section 1, Critique) for a critique of this conception of the rational person.)