Doxastic voluntarism is a philosophical view that people elect their own

beliefs A belief is a subjective Attitude (psychology), attitude that something is truth, true or a State of affairs (philosophy), state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some Life stance, stance, take, or opinion ...

; that is, that subjects have a certain amount of control over what they believe, such that a subject may choose whether or not to believe a certain thing. This philosophical view is derived from a branch of

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...

known as

doxastic logic Doxastic logic is a type of logic concerned with reasoning about beliefs. The term ' derives from the Ancient Greek (''doxa'', "opinion, belief"), from which the English term ''doxa'' ("popular opinion or belief") is also borrowed. Typically, a ...

; however, as opposed to other philosophical views on belief, doxastic voluntarism claims each human agent as the author of their own beliefs. Doxastic voluntarism falls under the branch of philosophy known as

ethics of belief The ethics of belief refers to a cluster of related issues that focus on standards of rational belief, intellectual excellence, and conscientious belief-formation. Among the questions addressed in the field are: * Are there standards of some sort ...

. Philosophers distinguish two types of doxastic voluntarism: direct doxastic voluntarism and indirect doxastic voluntarism. Direct doxastic voluntarism being that the person has control over some of their beliefs (e.g. an individual changes his belief from theism to atheism) and indirect doxastic voluntarism is that the person has unintended control, through voluntary intermediate actions, over some of their beliefs (e.g. researching and unintentionally evaluating the evidence).

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