 The remedy for such biases of judgment is to redefine the initial situation. Rather than a state of nature Rawls situates the parties to his social contract so that they do not have access to factual knowledge that can distort their judgments and result in unfair principles. Rawls’s original position is an initial agreement situation wherein the parties are without information that enables them to tailor principles of justice favorable to their personal circumstances. Among the essential features of the original position is that no one knows his or her place in society, class position or social status, nor does any one know his or her race or gender, fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, level of intelligence, strength, education, and the like. Rawls even assumes that the parties do not know their values or “conceptions of the good,” their religious or philosophical convictions, or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a “veil of ignorance” (TJ 12/11). This veil of ignorance deprives the parties of all knowledge of particular facts about themselves, about one another, and even about their society and its history. 