Responsible Belief : Limitations, Liabilities, and Melioration

Responsible Belief tackles the problem of fixing the tenacity of believers in forming, holding, and modifying beliefs. In conversation with the history of philosophy and religion, the author attempts to expose and refute some aspects of the dominant epistemological framework for engaging belief fixation and improvement. In contrast to this framework, Dr. Frazier provides a model of a responsible believing agent rooted in an ethic of the intellectual virtue tradition. In dialogue with Aristotle, he proposes three principal virtues, which he calls the generative, the transmissive, and the metamorphic. The author's alternative framework includes an examination of the role that intellectual passions play in the melioration of belief. Responsible Belief considers whether Doestoevsky's claim that "Beauty will save the world" has a place in discussions of belief formation and revision and offers an account of its vitality in addressing the concerns raised in the book.