Justifying Practical Reasoning

In this paper we discuss arguments embodying practical reasoning — arguments as to what it is sensible for someone to do in a given situation. We draw attention to differences between practical reasoning and reasoning about beliefs, and suggest that practical arguments should be treated as a species of presumptive reasoning, best handled using argumentation schemes and associated critical questions. We extend the argument scheme for practical reasoning and its critical questions proposed by Walton, and relate this to our previous work. We discuss an implementation of this approach, and then describe a particular application which makes use of the lessons learned.