 Any advantage it has over the conception of morality as an impartial point of view presumably arises from the fact that the ideal observer is not completely defined in terms of impartiality. (If she were, the two conceptions would simply coincide.) Yet many ideal observer theorists seem to accept a characterization of the ideal observer which concentrates on her impartiality and impersonality. Firth, for example, suggests that the ideal observer is both ‘disinterested,’ in the strong sense of being ‘entirely lacking in particular interests,’ and ‘dispassionate,’ in that she is ‘incapable of experiencing any emotions at all.’ (Firth, 1952) Defined in this way, however, the ideal observer sounds not only impersonal but deeply indifferent; and the idea that the moral judgments of a person who had neither emotional responses nor particular interests could be trusted, let alone that they might be considered definitive of morality, strikes some critics as highly implausible (Brandt 1979).