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.
