ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two issues that are important for both belief ascription, and reasoning in general, the first is the notion of relevance, which is essential to realistic processing; the second is the intensional identification of objects, which, amongst other things, has a strong bearing on determining relevant beliefs. The chapter claims that a belief environment system is a good way of coping with the pragmatic issues of speech acts and metaphor. It presents the application of notions derived for belief to the explication and modelling of metaphor understanding. The chapter summarizes the authors' views on the accompanying question of how, intensional identification fits with both belief ascription and metaphor. The chapter advocates a highly 'pragmatic' approach to propositional attitudes. It describes ViewGen, present belief-ascription system based on explicit proposition-groups known as 'environments', and presents justifications for the use of explicit environments.
