 Even if the act-consequentialist counterpart theories that earnest consequentializers produce aren’t gimmicky, they could be objectionable for other reasons. Indeed, some argue that they are explanatorily inadequate. For whereas many earnest consequentializers adopt  Reasons for Preferring Ground Deontic Statuses  and, so, hold that the deontic statuses of actions are grounded in the reasons that agents have for preferring (or dispreferring) the outcomes in which they are performed, others believe that it’s the other way around. As they see it, these act-consequentialist counterpart theories invert the true explanatory direction. For whereas the earnest consequentializer holds that the impermissibility of Abe’s breaking his promise is grounded in the fact that he ought to prefer the outcome in which he keeps it, they believe instead that Abe’s reason for preferring the outcome in which he keeps it is grounded in the fact that it’s impermissible for him to break it. And precursors of this objection go as far back as E. F. Carritt (1928: 72–3) and W. D. Ross (1939: 289), both of whom argued that even if we think that promise-breakings are bad, we should think this only because it’s wrong to break a promise. And, so, the wrongness of promise-breakings explains their badness, not the other way around, as the act-consequentialist might suppose.