Relative and Absolute Gradable Adjectives
Linguistic Foundations and Philosophical Applications
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22428136 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Weston Siscoe (0000-0002-7804-9651, The Ohio State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1747-9991 • E-ISSN: 1747-9991 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/phc3.70114 |
| OpenAlex | W7168023877 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 79 |
In Ignorance , Peter Unger famously argues for a version of radical skepticism, that everyone knows “hardly anything to be so.” Skepticism, of course, is nothing new. What was unique about Unger's position is that it relied on a distinction between relative and absolute terms, leading to a number of discoveries about the behavior and semantics of gradable adjectives. This paper will consider the research program that his argument has spawned, first in linguistics and then increasingly making its way back to philosophy, influencing debates in aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy.
Analytic philosophy · Ignorance · Nothing · Politics · Relative clause · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
Utopophobia
Two theories about adjectives
The Semantics of Gradation
The Dynamics of Vagueness
Scorekeeping in a language game
A semantics for positive and comparative adjectives
There Are No Reasons for Affective Attitudes
Hedges
What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?
Meaning and Context in Children's Understanding of Gradable Adjectives
‘Extremely Racist’ and ‘Incredibly Sexist’
The Unity of the Ideal Virtues
Does Being Rational Require Being Ideally Rational? ‘Rational’ as a Relative and an Absolute Term
The Gradability of ‘Conscious’
Good people are not like good knives
Degrees of consciousness
Being Rational Enough
The Demandingness of Virtue
'Almost there'
Total Adjectives vs. Partial Adjectives
Vagueness, truth and logic
General semantics
Grading, A Study in Semantics
A Defense of Skepticism
On danger
Awareness by degree
Aesthetic Adjectives
The interpretation of adjectival comparatives
Certainty in Action
Quantifiers in Comparatives
Total and partial predicates and the weak and strong interpretations
Absolutely relative or relatively absolute? The linguistic behavior of gradable adjectives and degree modifiers
Scale Structure, Degree Modification, and the Semantics of Gradable Predicates
Pragmatic Halos
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |