Some objects make themselves into the kind of objects they are by conforming to their constitutive standards (the self-constitution requirement).

However, according to Korsgaard “there need be no such regress if there are principles that are constitutive of the very rational activities that we trying to perform” (2008: 5, 1996b: 164–67, 2009) In this formulation, the principles of practical rationality are constitutive of rational agency, in the sense that they are standards arising from and justified by the nature of the object in question (i.e., the rational agent). More specifically, unless the object conforms to the standard, it cease