 The distributive objection is troubling: it forces us to find some justification for that feature of common sense morality that C. D. Broad called ‘self-referential altruism,’ the view that each of us has special obligations to her family, her friends, her fellow citizens, etc. Defenders of special obligations need to show why our pre-theoretical commitment to such obligations is more than merely a reflection of our constitution as, in Hume’s terms, ‘limited altruists.’ Advocates of evolutionary ethics will suggest that, given that we can offer a story about why beliefs to the effect that we owe more to certain persons than to others have survival advantage, we have reason to discount the claim that we have genuine special obligations. It has been claimed that we are hard-wired to promote the continuance of our genetic inheritance. Doing what we need to do to protect genetically related persons (and others willing to protect such persons), then, is evolutionarily advantageous. Thus, acting as though and believing that we have special obligations (at least to friends and family members) is advantageous.