What is the tertiary norm of belief?

Abstract

Timothy Williamson (in ‘Justifications, excuses, and sceptical scenarios’) distinguishes three kinds of norm for belief, which he calls ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’. He argues that a belief is justified if it satisfies the primary norm and excused if it satisfies only the tertiary norm. The argument turns on cases of intuitively unjustified belief in which the tertiary norm is satisfied, on Williamson’s rough-and-ready statement of that norm. I argue that, once we state the tertiary norm more carefully, it is clear that it is not satisfied in these cases. So we need some other reason to think that the tertiary norm is not justifying.