 In any case, this reply to the distributive objection depends upon the claim that we can balance our special obligations against our natural or consequentialist duties. According to most defenders of special obligations, such obligations are prima facie obligations, i.e., they are obligations with a certain weight that can be counterbalanced by the weight of other special obligations or of other types of obligations. In order to figure out what our all-things-considered duty is, we need to weigh all of our reasons for action and decide which is the strongest or weightiest in the circumstances. One advantage of a theory such as consequentialism is that, given that it regards all of our obligations or duties as derivative from one fundamental duty (the duty to maximize value), we do not need to try to determine which of our duties is strongest in any given instance. Once we allow non-derivative, genuinely special obligations in our moral theory, we are left with the question as to whether we can ever know when a special obligation outweighs another special obligation or a natural duty. Moral philosophers such as Ross give us no answer to this question, and it is plausible to suppose that there is no general rule that we can use for weighing duties against one another. Perhaps the best answer is that, once we know what our obligations are, it is self-evident as to which is the strongest, always remembering that ‘self-evident’ does not mean ‘obvious,’ but, rather, ‘can be known or justifiably believed without any process of reasoning or inference.’ At this point, we are involved in controversies in moral epistemology that are beyond the scope of this piece.