 The device of the contract is thus in reflective equilibrium with certain background theories that themselves contain moral beliefs. These are theories, or crucial beliefs, about the nature of persons, the role of morality or justice in society, and beliefs about procedural justice. The contract is not simply based on uncontroversial assumptions about human rationality, although it describes a rational choice problem within the constraints it imposes; nor is it based on formal considerations about practical reasoning or the logic or semantics of moral discourse. If Rawls were trying to justify the structure of the contract by appeal to theories that themselves were completely non-moral, then he would be offering the kind of independent justification for the principles that would characterize them as foundational (Daniels 1996, Timmons 1987), so the claim that the background theories are themselves moral is part of the rationale for concluding that Rawls is clearly rejecting foundationalism. (Some philosophers, as noted earlier, argue that reflective equilibrium is compatible with foundationalism, citing Rawls in this regard though they ignore his probability judgment that such a compatibility exists in principle and is highly unlikely to be met.) Without acceptance of that wider circle of moral beliefs, Rawls's construction lacks support, and if that construction were modified, some of his arguments against utilitarianism would be weakened.