Ideal theory and decision theory
The ideal theory debate is actually applied decision theory. The tools and vocabulary of decision theory—at a minimum, the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem, the concept of epistemic risk aversion, and the area of sequential decision theory—are useful in this new domain.
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Ideal theory
If I may editorialize, the ideal theory debate is essentially about how to translate our understanding of justice into actions in the present. Reductively, one side (the idealists) advocates for always moving the world we inhabit closer to the ideally just world while the other side (the non-idealists) advocates for always moving the world we inhabit toward the best adjacent world.
What’s not usually at issue in the ideal theory debate is: our understanding of the status quo, our predictive models of the future, or our notion of justice. That’s not to say that there’s consensus on these issues—far from it. It’s just that discussion of these issues doesn’t fall under the heading of ‘ideal theory’. No one considers themselves to be waging that debate when they talk about currently existing inequality in Germany or what justice recommends with regard to positive and negative rights. By all this I merely mean to emphasize that the scope of the ideal theory debate is rather small—given all the presuppositions above, what algorithm do we employ to choose the next possible world we’ll inhabit?
Hopefully, by framing the ideal theory debate in the foregoing terms, I’ve predisposed you to my point of view: The subject matter of the ideal theory debate is also the subject matter of decision theory. That is, the ideal theory debate is really a debate about applied decision theory.
Normative decision theory
Webster’s dictionary defines—*cough*—(Hansson 1994) says “decision theory is concerned with goal-directed behaviour in the presence of options”. We’ll try to make this description more comprehensive by appealing to Leonard Savage’s formalization. The hope is that by describing decision theory fully, we can see how the boundaries of the ideal theory debate line up with the boundaries of decision theory.