As a society, people are often tricked into believing that the beliefs they voluntarily practice are the ones they have voluntarily acquired. In other words, when one is allowed to freely choose and believe in the values they align with, one immediately equates the notion with free will and voluntary belief. 

However, the accommodation and practice of a belief are distinguishable from the voluntary acquisition of the belief itself. While one may freely choose to strengthen or confirm the beliefs that they accommodated into their lives, the acquisition itself is environmentally, structurally, and socially involuntary. 

The argument for doxastic voluntarism asserts that beliefs are intentional and freely chosen by an individual. One’s proactive choice comes into play when beliefs are formed through propositional attitudes and the intentional selection of specific evidence. Take your daily newspaper. Let’s say that someone is reading the newspaper every day while eating breakfast. Despite the underlying bias that newspapers entail, readers intentionally choose to read articles that suit their ideas and reject the titles that contradict their own. 

Following this logic, it can be argued that belief is formed and chosen through either pragmatism or evidentialism, which asserts the distinctive mechanism behind a belief. While pragmatism argues that belief is a calculated choice that maximizes one’s benefits, evidentialism explains that the presence of evidence determines the choice of belief. However, if one’s calculations are limited by the environment that one is surrounded by or if the evidence that one sees is restricted by the structure that their life functions under, how can that choice be considered voluntary? 

Offering an answer to the aforementioned question, I argue that there exist sociological and psychological explanations as to why people are systemically barred from making intentional choices in belief. I put forward three shreds of evidence, which are environmental, structural, and individualistic factors, and conclude why beliefs are involuntary.

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