 Similar remarks apply to the conception of the impartial point of view as ‘the point of view of the universe’ (Sidgwick 1907), to Hare’s conception of the ideal moral agent as a so-called ‘archangel’ (Hare, 1981), and, Walker claims, to Firth’s conception of the ideal impartial observer (Firth, 1952.) Similarly, Marilyn Friedman points out that even if a person did manage to occupy such a point of view for a period of time – supposing such a thing to be possible – there would be no way to be certain that she had successfully done so: standard conceptions of impartiality, she claims, prescribe “methods of normative thinking [which] represent psychological and epistemic feats, the achievement of which we have no independent way to confirm” (Friedman 1991, 645).