 The ideal observer, then, to be useful, must be given some independent definition, and not simply defined as ‘an agent who always gets it right.’ The challenge is to find such a definition. Here, as with the conception of morality as defined by an impartial point of view, the phenomenon of morally admirable partiality proves a particularly difficult issue. Should we define the ideal observer as being loyal to her country, or as being above loyalty? If the former, can she serve as an adequate moral example to people who do not share her allegiances? If the latter, how can she serve as an adequate example to anyone? Any process of idealization of the sort required to make such a conception work seems likely to result in an individual so removed from the concrete lives and concerns of actual human moral agents, that her moral judgments will turn out to be in large part irrelevant to the question of how such agents ought to live (see Walker 1991).