ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses whether experimentally induced metajustifications are actually justifications of rules. It explores that the elements of the framework are indeterminate in the situation of action. A social framework is therefore necessary but not sufficient to define a situation of action, another fact that will assume some importance in understanding legitimation under conditions of dissensus. Actual consensus, however, is a serious theoretical problem because the theory must distinguish between dissensus and deviance. In the theory of justifications, the validity of a justification determines the probability of its acceptance. Validity formulates a kind of legitimacy that is external to the actor. To account for actual legitimation requires additional assumptions of two kinds: actor assumptions and assumptions about the scope conditions of the primary process that gives rise to the metajustification process. In the theory of metajustifications, dissensus induces challenges to offers of justifications, such challenges induce metajustifications, and, if there is doubt about consensus, metajustifications are justifications of rules.
