2 The observation is meant to recall Hamblin's Dictum; see Hamblin, C. L. “Questions,“ Australasiml joumal of Philosophy 36 (1958): 162.Google ScholarDiamond, Cora “Riddles and Anselm's Riddle,” in The Rca/is tic Spirit (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991): 267-89,Google Scholar suggests that when this demand is not satisfied, what is being posed may still be a riddle- something rather different than a question.

3 Prichard, H.A. “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”, Mirlli 21 (1912): 21–37.Google Scholar

4 Nietzsche, for one, thought that it was; in the Gcl!calogy, he develops the idea that morality “overcomes itself,” that is, that once the demands of morality are uniformly enforced, the effect will be to undercut the commitment to morality itself. In particular, when the moral demand for honesty is extended and deepened to include thoroughgoing intellectual honesty, moral agents will have to surrender their justifications for morality. His view is a healthy corrective to the presumption that because morality will of course be self-endorsing, the problem that arises here is vicious circularity.

5 Luc Jacquet, March of the Pcnguilzs. Produced by Ilann Girard. Warner Independent Pictures.

6 See Millgram, Elijah “O’ ou venons-nous … Que sommes nous … Oil allons-nous,“ in Reading Bcmard Williams, ed. Callcut, D. (London: Routledge, 2009): 141–165,Google Scholar for further discussion. Although plasticity has come in for much attention in recent evolutionary biology, the slogan I have just introduced is not meant as a claim about our evolutionary history. While I mean my claims to be compatible with current science, the point is not that hyperspecializing strategies are the products of past selection pressures, but rather that, however we got this way, it is how we are suited to function now. Relatedly, neither do I mean to suggest that all human societies allow for full or even partial exercise of this capacity.

7 The justification for the practice, as I understand it, is that when the judge does not so much supervise an investigation as determine the merits of arguments presented to him by opposing sides, clients are ill-served by an attorney who fails to present arguments that the judge might find compelling. (I'm grateful to Alice Clapman for discussion on this point, and for the illustration.)

8 I'm grateful to Carla Bagnoli for serving as a native informant.

9 I'm grateful to Candace Vogler for alerting me to the central role in these standards of definitions of injuries.

10 For discussion of the cognitive equipment, see Millgram, ElijahEtlrics Dmzc Rixlrt: Practical Rcascmilzg as a Fozmdaticmfor Moral Tlreory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, chap. 2 and sec. 5.7.

11 The force of the requirement is exhibited in Bernard Williams's venture into applied ethics. The Williams Report constructs its argument around the Harm Principle, not because there is some philosophically satisfying argument for it, but because it was the only criterion on which the witnesses interviewed by the commission seemed to agree (Williams, BernardObscenity mzd Film Censorslzip: A11 Abridgemellt of tile Williams Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981)Google Scholar). For further discussion of the problems posed by this requirement, see Millgram, Etl!ics Done Rigl!t, chap. 8.

12 Here's the sort of thing I mean. Historically inclined Americans will recall the anti-Communist posturing in which Richard Nixon had to engage in order eventually to be in a position to recognize what was then called “Red China.“ Politicians are in some circumstances expL'Cied to lie in just this way about what they are going to do. The sort of concern to be alleviated is that a politician who refrained from lying would be neither effective in advancing the interests of his constituents, nor in reshaping those interests; yet these are among the most important parts of a politician's job. To be sure, there is an air of paradox in the thought that not lying to one's constituents is to betray their trust; nonetheless, it would be hasty to dismiss even this instance of the so-called problem of dirty hands on that basis.

13 In putting it this way, I mean to be neutral as to whether such an agent takes himself to have reasons, not derived from his professional niche, for being moral (so that he is worrying about whether they are perhaps trumped by niche-based reasons to disregard moral requirements), or whether he is considering reasons for morality that are directly niche-derived. For an interesting example of a mixed stance, see Munger, CharlesPoor Charlie's Almanack (expanded 2nd ed.), ed. Kaufman, Peter (Marceline: Walsworth, 2007), 80,Google Scholar describing the investment firm that he and Warren Buffett manage: “this place … tries harder than most places to be ethical … despite the presence of some human failing, we've had an amazingly low amount of litigation or scandal or anything of that sort over … decades. And people notice that.... I don't think we deserve a lot of credit for that because we early understood that we'd make more money that way …. I'd like to believe that we'd all behave well even if it didn't work so well financially. And every once in a while, we get an opportunity to behave that way. But more often we've made extra money out of morality. Ben Franklin was right for us. He didn't say honesty was the best morals, he said it was the best policy.“

14 For an historical example, see Duden, BarbaraThe Woman Beneath the Skin, trans. Dunlap, Thomas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991),Google Scholar which contrasts the standards of the barber-surgeon or the town physicus of eighteenthcentury Europe with those shared by today's medical specializations.

15 There have, however, been philosophers, most recently of a Kantian constructivist bent, who thought that individual systems of standards, whatever they are, must carry commitments enabling a uniform answer to the Question. Korsgaard, Christine M.The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),CrossRefGoogle Scholar is a well-known example.

16 Once we have the sketch of humanity as serial hyperspecializers on hand, and we are alert to the likely effects of a strategy of serial hyperspecialization, a survey of the more traditional sorts of platform for answering the Question ought to make one think twice about just how much in the way of truly nicheindependent platforms we have. Traditional platforms may not be altemativcs to niche-based platforms, just because serial hyperspecializers are cognitively equipped to internalize the standards of the niches they occupy. Take the sample platforms to which I alluded earlier: Professionals typically desire success in their profession, and there are many other ways goals and ends are shaped by a serial hyperspecializer's niche; they are thus not normally independent of the niche one occupies. One's well-being is likewise shaped by the niche one occupies: doing well at what one does is a large part of doing well. (This indicates how keeping an eye out for consequences of the serial hyperspecialization strategy can give content to an otherwise amorphous concept; on the other hand, that cannot be all there is to well-being, because a serial hyperspecializer can do well by switching niches.) And I gestured at reasons for thinking that not all of rationality is, pace Kant, niche-independent: recall how standards for successful argument varied by field.

17 A caveat: This may explain why we are so often resistant to the notion of moral expertise: moral guidance is picked out in part as guidance of which we can avail ourselves where expertise is beside the point. However, traditions in moral philosophy differ on this point. And codes of professional ethics attempt to extend the moral mode of regulation into areas of disciplinary practice; where they do so, moral expertise is much more in place. A hospital's hiring a bio-ethicist does not prompt nearly the puzzlement that appeals to moral expertise in non-professional contexts would.

Urmson, J. O.Tlu· Emotihc Theory of Ethics (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 83–85,Google Scholar presents a consideration that can both be taken as an argument that we don't treat others as authorities in matters of morals, and a quick and dirty test for whether we are willing to treat people as experts and authorities in some region of applied ethics. He observes that questions prefaced with “Is it true that … ?” are normally addressed to authorities, and that prefacing questions on moral matters with this formula sounds distinctly odd. (“Is it true that killing is wrong?“) However, notice how much less odd it sounds when the subject is applied ethics: “Is it true that medical providers should obtain informed consent whenever possible?“

(Another caveat: old-school applied ethics lives up to its name by taking its task to be that of applying one or another niche-independent moral theory to a problem posed by, e.g., medical practice. The commitment to informed consent, in the example I just gave, is derived from views about the importance of autonomy, not in medicine, but in general. However, I certainly don't mean to endorse that way of doing it; better work in applied ethics rarely looks like this.)

18 That said, it does need to be qualified. Macintyre, AlasdairEthics and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 183.ff.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also 198.ff., describes a case in which there is less than meets the eye to the apparently shared signon to a set of generically coordinating priorities. Death is agreed to be bad and to be prevented when possible and within reason, but how bad (and how it is bad) varies startlingly from one set of niche-specific guidelines to another.

19 For some discussion of what the defect amounts to, see Macintyre, Ethics and Politics, chap. 11.Google Scholar

20 For discussion, see Millgram, Elijah “On Being Bond Out of Your Mind,” Procct'dings of the Aristott'lian Society 104 (2004): 163-84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In “Moral Values and Secondary Qualities,” American Philosofllical Quarterly 36 (1999): 253-55, I contrasted evanescent affective responses with the stable reasons typical of morality; I now worry that I was too hasty in assuming without argument that moral reasons must be all that stable. There is also a tricky worry that I do not want to resolve now: when affective responses shift, do we want to say that the reasons have shifted, or rather that our sensitivity to the reasons has changed?

21 This sort of approach to the topic may be the source of two related and not uncommon presumptions that I earlier mentioned in passing: that morality has in the first place to do with managing interactions of generic agents rather than specialists, and that there is no such thing as moral expertise.