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s4h-epistemology-justification

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Analyzes what would actually justify believing a claim. Maps the justification structure (foundationalist, coherentist, reliabilist) and identifies the weakest link in the chain. Use when you say 'what would it actually take to know this', 'is this belief actually justified', 'what's the foundation for this assumption', 'we keep citing the same evidence for everything', 'I believe this but I can't say why', 'what would change my mind', or when a claim feels supported but you want to make the support structure explicit and test it.

skills/s4h-epistemology-justification/SKILL.md

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# Epistemology: Justification

A belief can feel well-supported without actually being justified. The feeling of certainty is not evidence of justification — it's evidence of confidence, which is a psychological state, not an epistemic one. Justification analysis makes the load-bearing structure of a belief explicit so it can be examined and tested.

Three main structures for how beliefs get justified:
- **Foundationalism**: beliefs are justified by tracing back to basic beliefs that are self-evident, incorrigible, or empirically certain. The chain has a floor.
- **Coherentism**: beliefs are justified by fitting into a mutually supporting web of other beliefs. No single foundation — the whole web holds itself up.
- **Reliabilism**: beliefs are justified if they were produced by a reliable cognitive process (careful observation, valid inference, calibrated expert judgment) — regardless of whether the believer can articulate why.

Most real belief systems are hybrid. The point of analysis is not to pick the right theory of justification — it's to find where the specific belief's justification structure is weakest.

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