. In this paper we introduce the deliberating robber, an example of reasoning about preferences in a logic of desires. We show that two defeasible reasoning schemes proposed in qualitative decision theory derive counterintuitive consequences. 1 Introduction In the usual approaches to planning in AI, a planning agent is provided with a description of some state of affairs, a goal state, and charged with the task of discovering (or performing) some sequence of actions to achieve that goal. Contextsensitive goals are provided for situations in which the agent encounters goals that it cannot achieve, for example when its objectives can be satisfied to varying degrees, such as time taken to fill a tank or amount of fluid spilled. The desirability aspect of context-sensitive goals is formalized with preferencebased or utilitarian semantics, which are provided by decision theory [8, 10, 3]. 3 Besides expressing the desirability of a state, adopting a goal represents some commitment to purs..
