Writers have criticized purposivism on the ground that the assumption that the legislature consists of reasonable people with reasonable purposes is false (Posner 1985, 288–89). The assumption is best understood not as an empirical one, however, but as an idealizing stipulation used to construct a content. As noted, objectified intentions are not genuine intentions at all. Purposivism, like any theory of legal interpretation that appeals to constructed contents based on counterfactual assumptions, faces challenges both to specify the relevant assumptions in a way that yields a unique content and, more fundamentally, to explain why the content thus constructed should be given primacy in legal interpretation (see further discussion in section 4.2). For example, the simple democratic rationale that may seem to support an appeal to actual intentions – that courts should carry out the intentions of the elected representatives of the people – does not apply to objectified intentions, as they are not in fact the intentions of the legislature.