I think I and John Maxwell IV mean the same thing, but here is the way I would phrase it. Suppose someone is offering me the pick a ticket for one of a range of different lotteries. Each lottery offers the same set of prizes, but depending on which lottery I participate in, the probability of winning them is different.

I am an agent, and we assume I have a preference order on the lotteries -- e.g. which ticket I want the most, which ticket I want the least, and which tickets I am indifferent between. The action that will be rational for me to take depends on which ticket I want.

I am saying that a general theory of rational action should deal with arbitrary preference orders for the tickets. The more standard theory restricts attention to preference orders that arise from first assigning a utility value to each prize and then computing the expected utility for each ticket.