 Consequentialist moral theories hold that moral evaluations and justifications must ultimately be grounded in the value of the consequences of the actions, rules, policies, strategies, character traits, etc. that are being evaluated (Hooker 1994). That is, the ultimate question to be asked of any action, rule, or character trait under evaluation is, “Does it [the action, rule, or trait in question] promote the good?” For the purposes of this entry, three important assumptions will be made regarding consequentialist theories. First, consequentialist theories will be assumed to hold that the overall values of sets of consequences can be determined, and thus ranked, independently of the identity of any particular agent. Second, such theories will be assumed to hold that the impersonal good is largely if not entirely composed of the interests of individual persons, and that the interests of each person count for just as much as those of every other person. Finally, it will be assumed that we are dealing with act consequentialist theories – theories, that is, which hold that the consequentialist standard is to be applied directly to the actions of agents, and that what is required is that every action (or overall pattern of action) maximize the impersonal good. Such a theory, then, requires that every agent always choose an action that will bring about consequences at least as good as those that would be brought about by any other available action.