Justification, Excuse, and Dispositions to Follow Norms

Out of all the candidates for a norm of justified belief, knowledge is not commonly viewed as favorably as others. Recently, however, those sympathetic to the knowledge norm have lodged various indirect defenses thereof by appropriating the concept of excuse, as part of a broader account of justification, to explain away intuitions that beliefs falling short of knowledge can be justified. I analyze how Williamson's externalist Derivative Norms Framework (DNF) can be modified to resist a common criticism often lodged at this way of viewing the normative significance of excuse, that excuse, once viewed through a DNF‐friendly lens, is too coarse a category to employ to properly discriminate between different normative dimensions of belief. A significant benefit of my analysis is that it can also avoid the worry that, in aiming to remove the charge of normative indiscrimination, the DNF defender inadvertently undermines their very capacity to employ the category of excuse in explaining away intuitions anathema to the knowledge norm. I show how the DNF defender can avoid this by preventing falsification of a principle that ought to be part of their account of excuse if it is to do the explanatory work they desire for it to do.