  A different option is to concede that the appearance in the relevant cases of a genuine dispute is best explained in terms of clashes of conative attitudes, and to stress that this explanation is not incompatible with realism. After all, realists can consistently agree that moral convictions are usually accompanied with such attitudes (see Jackson and Pettit 1998 for this point). By making that response, realists in effect give up trying to account for the cases by using assumptions that form a part of their theory. For even if the assumption that the cases involve clashing attitudes is not inconsistent with realism it is also not entailed by it. A potential problem with that type of response is raised by the natural view that the justification of a theory about moral semantics (such as the form of cognitivism which forms a component of realism) depends at least in part on its ability to explain how people behave or relate to disputes about how to apply moral terms. The relevant facts include the willingness of such disputants to see themselves as standing in genuine opposition to each other. Thus, if, in some cases, that fact is best explained by assumptions that are external to that theory, then some bits of the relevant evidence fail to support it. That is a potential disadvantage of the pertinent response, although there may obviously be other sets of evidence which make up for the (alleged) loss (see further Tersman 2006, ch. 5 and Björnsson 2012).