C.2.3:15.1 - Weakest-essential-support rule

Identify the assessed episteme’s expressed claim or argument and the compositional support relation it actually uses. Its F is bounded by the least-formal essential content or inference within that assessed expression. A machine-checked annex does not make an informal connecting inference machine-checked.

External evidence has a different role. A typed claim supported by an informal observation can remain F4 because its predicates and types are explicit, while its warrant remains weak or unresolved under B.3. If the assessed bearer is instead the whole argument, an essential inference expressed only as controlled prose caps that argument at F3 despite an F7 annex. Name that bearer and inference; do not take a minimum over every external source in an evidence chain.