 Although commonsense morality seems firmly committed to special obligations, and seems firmly committed to an understanding of such obligations that cannot be accommodated by consequentialism, difficulties remain in trying to provide some grounds for such obligations. We can see these difficulties more clearly if we contrast special obligations with a type of duty recognized by commonsense morality that is not special, i.e., natural duties. Natural duties are “moral requirements which apply to all men [and women] irrespective of status or of acts performed…owed by all persons to all others” (Simmons 1979, 13). It is plausible to suppose that the fundamental or basic justification of why we have natural duties is the intrinsic nature of persons, i.e., the intrinsic nature of those to whom the duties are owed (moral patients). For example, consider my duty to tell the person sitting next to me at a bar that Joe Schmoe slipped poison into her drink. It may seem to be the case that I am morally required to tell only a limited class of people that someone has put poison into their drink, namely, the class consisting of the person sitting next to me right now whose drink is such that I know that it is poisoned. However, the fundamental or basic justification for my having that duty is the nature of the person to whom the duty is owed – she is rational, or sentient, or [substitute your preferred characterization of a moral patient] – and her nature is sufficient to ground the duty. My proximity to the person and my knowledge of the poison in her drink facilitate my being able to fulfill my (natural) duty of mutual aid, but it is not a part of the fundamental explanation of why I have such a duty in the first place. So it is the nature of the action, i.e., warning the relevant sort of being of imminent danger, that renders the action morally required. Anyone else in the same causal and epistemic position would similarly have a duty to warn of the poison in the drink. I occupy no peculiar status or role and have performed no prior actions such that if I did not occupy that role or had not performed those actions, I would have no duty to warn of the poison in the drink.