 Comparatives—like John is happier than Mary—finally, are according to the received view such that they refer to abstract objects that form a total ordering (so-called degrees). According to Moltmann, a better way to understand these sorts of sentences is with reference to tropes. John is happier than Mary should hence be understood as John’s happiness exceeds Mary’s happiness. Moltmann thinks this way of understanding comparatives is preferable to the standard view, because tropes are easier to live with than “abstract, rarely explicit entities such as degrees or sets of degrees” (Moltmann 2009: 64).