Argument Schemes for Reasoning About the Actions of Others

In practical reasoning, it is important to take into consideration what other agents will do, since this will often influence the effect of actions performed by the agent concerned. In previous treatments, the actions of others must either be assumed, or argued for using a similar form of practical reasoning. Such arguments, however, will also depend on assumptions about the beliefs, values and preferences of the other agents, and so are difficult to justify. In this paper we capture, in the form of argumentation schemes, reasoning about what others will do, which depends not on assuming particular actions, but through consideration of the expected utility (based on the promotion and demotion of values) of particular actions and alternatives. Such arguments depend only on the values and preferences of the agent concerned, and do not require assumptions about the beliefs, values and preferences of the other relevant agents. We illustrate the approach with a running example based on Prisoner’s Dilemma.