Masaya Ochiai

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for drafting, translating, and editing academic prose. Recent debates and editorial policies often treat facts about how a text was produced as epistemically significant. This paper diagnoses the philosophical assumption behind such process-oriented norms: process essentialism, the view that the justificatory status of academic knowledge claims is constitutively dependent on their production process. I argue that strong forms of process essentialism are mistaken once we distinguish justificatory status from ethical questions of credit, accountability, and provenance. In publication contexts, what primarily matters is the quality of the public epistemic record—argumentative structure, evidential support, engagement with relevant work, and, where applicable, data, code, methods, and provenance claims—rather than the causal history of composition. I develop three objections: a genetic-fallacy argument, an argument from the unobservability and unenforceability of private process criteria, and an epistemic justice argument about exclusionary burdens. I conclude by showing how disclosure, contributorship, and provenance practices can be justified within an output-based framework without treating private process facts as constitutive of justification.