ABSTRACT
The Theory of Priorities is intended to disclose which states of affairs are intrinsically valuable, and how an ordering of the value of states of affairs may rationally be arrived at. An act will not be the best possible in the circumstances if some alternative action would have produced a better balance of goods over evils, or if the world would have remained overall better if the agent had done nothing at all. The various kinds of consequentialism have, in common with classical utilitarianism, a reference to the production of the best available balance of good over evil. Practice-consequentialism does not call on agents to consider whether each and every action, whether important or trivial, should become part of a social practice, but rather to adhere to optimific practices which are already in force, and also to comply with ones of whose adoption by the relevant agents there is a significant prospect.
