  If decision theory is interpreted in this way, however, then its relevance to the understanding of practical reason may appear correspondingly tenuous (compare Pettit and Smith 1997). The maximization of subjective utility is supposed to represent a normative ideal, one by appeal to which we can assess critically the deliberations of agents. In this guise, the attraction of the maximizing model lies in the idea that there can be rational requirements on action, stemming from the totality of an agent’s preferences and beliefs, even if we do not assume that there are independent, substantive standards for the critical assessment of individual ends. But this normative interpretation of maximizing rationality is tenable only if it is at least conceivable that individual agents might sometimes fail to satisfy its requirements—an‘ought’that it is not so much as possible to flout is not really an ‘ought’ at all (Lavin 2004). Thus the axioms of decision theory include constraints on an agent’s overall preferences (such as completeness and transitivity) that might be violated even by agents who are striving to satisfy their currently strongest desires. Such agents will be criticizable by the lights of decision theory insofar there is no consistent utility function that can be ascribed to them on the basis of their actual choices and behavior. The normative credentials of decision theory rest, then, on the plausibility of the axioms that are taken to define an individual utility function—axioms that may not be quite as innocent or uncontroversial as they appear (compare Mandler 2001).