In two recent papers, I have proposed a description of decision analysis that differs from the Bayesian picture painted by Savage, Jeffrey and other classic authors. Response to this view has been either overly enthusiastic or unduly pessimistic. In this paper I try to place the idea in its proper place, which must be somewhere in between. Looking at decision analysis as defeasible reasoning produces a framework in which planning and decision theory can be integrated, but work on the details has barely begun. It also produces a framework in which the meta-decision regress can be stopped in a reasonable way, but it does not allow us to ignore meta-level decisions. The heuristics for producing arguments that I have presented are only supposed to be suggestive; but they are not open to the egregious errors about which some have worried. And though the idea is familiar to those who have studied heuristic search, it is somewhat richer because the control of dialectic is more interesting than the deepening of search.

I begin by considering examples of practical reasoning. In the remainder of the paper, I try to say something about what Example 8. Playing soccer. Soccer is like table tennis, but a logical approach that begins to do justice to the subject with the added dimension of teamwork and the need to might be like. This task was selected as a benchmark problem in robotics, and has been extensively Example 1. Ordering a meal at a restaurant. Here, the problem is deciding what to eat and drink. Typing an email message, Even if the only relevant factors are price and preferences composing it as you go along, starts perhaps with a general about food, the number of possible combinations is very idea of what to say.

In this paper, we explore ideas regarding a formal logical model which allows for the use of stories to persuade autonomous software agents to take a particular course of action. This model will show how typical stories – sequences of events that form a meaningful whole – can be used to set an example for an agent and how the agent might adapt his own values and choices according to the values and choices made by the characters in the story.

There are two aspects of practical reasoning which present particular difficulties for current approaches to modelling practical reasoning through argumentation: temporal aspects, and the intrinsic worth of actions. Time is important because actions change the state of the world, we need to consider future states as well as past and present ones. Equally, it is often not what we do but the way that we do it that matters: the same future state may be reachable either through desirable or undesirable actions, and often also actions are done for their own sake rather than for the sake of their consequences. In this paper we will present a semantics for practical reasoning, based on a formalisation developed originally for reasoning about commands, in which actions and states are treated as of equal status. We will show how using these semantics facilitates the handling of the temporal aspects of practical reasoning, and enables, where appropriate, justification of actions without reference to their consequences.

This article provides an overview of the field of qualitative decision theory: its motivating tasks and issues, its antecedents, and its prospects. Qualitative decision theory studies qualitative approaches to problems of decision making and their sound and effective reconciliation and integration with quantitative approaches. Although it inherits from a long tradition, the field offers a new focus on a number of important unanswered questions of common concern to AI, economics, law, psychology, and management.