 Regardless of these more subtle textual issues Kant remains committed to the view that reason’s proper use is always only “regulative” and never constitutive. The distinction between the regulative and the constitutive may be viewed as describing two different ways in which the claims of reason may be interpreted. A principle of reason is constitutive, according to Kant, when it is taken to supply a concept of a real object (A306/B363; A648/B676). Throughout the Dialectic Kant argued against this (constitutive) interpretation of the ideas and principles of reason, claiming that reason so far transcends possible experience that there is nothing in experience that corresponds with its ideas. Although Kant denies that reason is constitutive he nevertheless, as we have seen, insists that it has an “indispensably necessary” regulative use. In accordance with reason’s demand, the understanding is guided and led to secure systematic unity and completion of knowledge. In other words, Kant seeks to show that reason’s demand for systematic unity is related to the project of empirical knowledge acquisition. Indeed, Kant links the demand for systematicity up with three other principles — those of homogeneity, specification and affinity — which he thinks express the fundamental presumptions that guide us in theory formation. The essential point seems to be that the development and expansion of empirical knowledge is always, as it were, “already” guided by the rational interests in securing unity and completion of knowledge. Without such a guiding agenda, and without the assumption that nature conforms to our rational demands for securing unity and coherence of knowledge, our scientific pursuits would lack orientation. Thus, the claim that reason’s principles play a necessary “regulative” role in science reflects Kant’s critical reinterpretation of the traditional rationalist ideal of arriving at complete knowledge.