Rawls holds that a person’s plan of life is rational if it is consistent with the principles of rational choice and would be chosen with full deliberative rationality. Satisfying the principles of rational choice, which Rawls calls “counting principles,” therefore, is necessary but not suficient for a plan to be rational. The principles rule out some plans, but do not select one uniquely or rank them completely. The principles are formal in the sense that they do not dictate any particular content, but only the general shape or structure that plans must have if they are to be rational. Deliberative rationality is necessary to select a single plan from among the formally rational candidates. Deliberative rationality, as an ideal, requires one to determine “in light of all the relevant facts . . . what it would be like to carry out these plans” and thereby allows an individual to select the plan that would “best realize his more fundamental desires” (TJ 366). The parties in the original position know that their plan of life will satisfy the counting principles. However, the veil of ignorance obviously deprives them of the information that they would need in order to engage in deliberative rationality.