Each time we act, we make the world different from what it would otherwise have been. In principle, the various outcomes that would result from the different courses of action open to us can be ranked in terms of their value. According to direct-act consequentialism, our task as moral agents is to increase value. And the more good we can do the better. So the right action is the best one; the one that produces more good and less harm than any otherl — and it is solely the value of the actions open to us that is relevant to which is the right one. We judge an act by the value of its consequences, using the term ‘consequence’ in a sufficiently broad sense to include the performance of the act itself, as well as what flows causally from it. Consequentialism is not, in itself, a complete moral theory — a theory, that is, which tells us which actions are in fact right and why. We need to add to it an account of what things are valuable and what things are bad. Consequentialism itself provides a formal structure within which a family of substantive moral theories can be found. Deontological theories lack this structure. At the fundamental...