Asserting to resolve decision problems

Decision theory is used to define a notion of ‘relevance’ in terms of decision problems. Decision problems are also used to explain why attitude attributions are made. Assuming that belief attributions are made to explain unexpected actions, and that assertions have to be relevant, it is shown that potentially ambiguous, or underspecified, de re belief attributions can be disambiguated by context. The last part of the paper shows how decision problems can be used to derive conversational implicatures.