ABSTRACT
In his article, Pritchard explores what is necessary for a genuine disagreement—crucially, whether such a disagreement requires a difference at the level of beliefs. Pritchard argues that it usually does. There is a large class of what might appear to be disagreements that are not genuinely so, but instead are the result of what he calls “dialectical posturing.” The dialectical poseur does not put any serious epistemic effort into addressing objections to her view, or to integrate it into the rest of her commitments. Dialectical posturing might be seen as a kind of manipulation or mere dialectical-role play. While one might be epistemically obligated to do something in light of genuine disagreement, one is perfectly in one’s epistemic rights to ignore dialectical posturing. There are, however, some genuine disagreements that are not at the level of belief. These are over what Pritchard calls “hinge commitments.” Differences in hinge commitments are not differences at the level of belief; however, they are nonetheless disagreements and are epistemically relevant.
