Contextjust

Contextjust is a theoretical framework for articulating the justification of beliefs, decisions, or actions within their surrounding context. It treats justification as inseparable from situational factors such as goals, constraints, audience, and available evidence, rather than as an abstract, decontextualized rationale. The term merges context and justification to highlight the role of environmental and communicative factors in reasoning.

In practice, contextjust involves identifying the central decision or belief, enumerating pertinent contextual variables, and linking each justification claim to specific aspects of the context. It encourages explicit accounting for situational factors, the reliability of sources, and potential biases, and it supports presenting the rationale in a form tailored to the audience.

Fields include explainable AI, where contextjust guides generation of explanations that cite user goals, data limitations, and operational constraints; philosophy and cognitive science, where it informs analyses of how justification varies across situations; and professional settings such as medicine and public policy, where decisions are often context-dependent.

Critics warn that context-rich explanations can become verbose or distract from core reasons, and that selecting which contextual elements to include may introduce bias. Proponents argue that controlled, standardized approaches to contextjust can improve transparency and accountability.

See also justification, explainable AI, context awareness, epistemology, decision theory.