The problem of justification has long been the central question of philosophy. At stake is what accounts as sufficient justification for claiming that a statement genuinely refers to the object in question. Unless we address this ontological gap between language and the external world, we cannot confidently claim that our statements are directly related to the object we aim to describe. With this, this paper proposes a redefinition of the problem of justification by examining the persistent gap between language and the external world. Traditional accounts of epistemic justification often assume a relatively direct relation between language and reality. However, linguistic mediation complicates this relation: our access to the world is structured through concepts, interpretive frameworks, and socially conditioned practices of meaning. By clarifying the distinction between linguistic representation and worldly causation, this study redefines justification not primarily as a property of the world or isolated beliefs, but what counts as a meaningful and responsible representation of the world. By situating justification within our linguistic practices, this approach offers a more precise account of how beliefs can be answerable to a world that is never accessed except through language, concepts, and interpretations.
Following Dorst (2026), this paper develops a higher-order account of epistemic vagueness. I begin by reconstructing Williamson’s epistemicist account of vagueness, focusing on the margin principle. I argue that epistemic vagueness cannot be explained by first-order indiscriminability alone, since such an explanation is self-undermining. A satisfactory account therefore appeals to higher-order uncertainty. I then clarify that the margin principle rests on two assumptions: the indiscriminability of just-noticeable differences (JNDs) and gradualness. I suggest that the former must be restricted, while the latter is incompatible with empirical data and unnatural. Finally, I argue that higher-order uncertainty provides a better explanation of non-gradual patterns in epistemic vagueness, and that this explanation is supported by psychological studies on discrimination and metacognition.
