The Scale Structure of Moral Adjectives

Abstract

DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxi2.08 In this paper we discuss how and whether moral adjectives fit a well-known semantics for gradable adjectives. We first test whether moral adjectives are relative or absolute adjectives. The preliminary results suggest that moral adjectives don’t fall neatly under either category. In the second part we tackle the question of the scale of moral adjectives in a more theoretical fashion, i.e. by investigating their possible scales with mathematically precise tools.

Keywords

• moral adjectives
• scalar semantics
• multidimensionality
• meta-ethics