Why does a distant mountain often look beautiful? It is a simple shape, maybe an inch high if you look at it next to your hand–not unlike a mound of grass-covered earth that’s a few feet away, or even a pile of laundry. Yet a mountain is much more likely than those things to be beautiful.

One answer: Human vision is not the perception of a flat field of shape and color, composed of little reflections on our retinas. It is a thoroughly interpretive act. We see the mountain differently from a pile of clothes because we know that the mountain is far away. The space between the viewer and the object is part of what we see. But why should we appreciate a large volume of empty space? Perhaps because we interact with it in our imaginations. We feel a potential to move freely through the space or to “conquer” the mountain by climbing it.

Another answer: Human perception is thoroughly interpretive, and we have learned to value mountains. They are God’s work; they are humbling creations of Nature; they are sublime. Supposedly, Petrarch was the first European since antiquity to appreciate outdoor views. Five hundred years later, we have absorbed positive evaluations of landscape. But that appreciation was absent in 12th-century Europe and might not exist in some current cultures. It might be possible for a culture to learn to love the sight of small mounds of earth.

What about pictures of mountains? They are just flat fields of color. Perhaps we enjoy them because we are able to derive the same experiences from them that we take from real mountains.

Also, we appreciate representation itself. A picture of some objects on a table can be as beautiful as a landscape painting of a huge mountain; but the mountain itself will be more beautiful than any set of plates and food. A picture of a mountain may be beautiful even if it is so stylized or abstract that we cannot imagine ourselves entering the space depicted in it. These examples show that it is often the feat of representation, rather than what is represented, that matters in art. In that way, the aesthetics of art and of nature seem fundamentally different.

This afternoon, I will guest-teach a public policy seminar for a friend who’s in Venezuela on a Fulbright. The topic of the day is international intervention. When is it appropriate (or obligatory) to impose sanctions or invade another country to promote human rights? Click below if you want to read my whole class plan.

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The Nobel Prize for Tom Schelling (which is enormously exciting for everyone in Maryland’s School of Public Policy), makes me think of a few points about game theory:

1. It’s a form of political theory that harkens back to classical authors from Hobbes to Rousseau (with echoes of Plato’s Crito and other ancient works). That is, it makes certain assumptions about the preferences and goals of “players”–usually individuals or states–and then asks what must happen when they interact. This is the same method that led Hobbes to believe that individuals, motivated by the goal of minimizing pain, would kill one another absent a state. Hobbes’ conclusions were rejected by other theorists, but his method remains alive in modern game theory. There is a rival tradition of political theory that treats people as deeply embedded in cultural contexts. For Hegel, Nietzsche, Dewey, Foucault, Habermas, and others, the important question is how and why culture has changed, not how individuals will act under specified theoretical conditions. Some results of game theory seem to generalize across all existing cultures–which wouldn’t have surprised Hobbes or Locke.

2. Since game theory starts with players and models their interaction, it can handle markets, wars, and votes equally well. Schelling’s work is typical in that it doesn’t fit within the borders of his own field (economics), but could equally belong to political science or–in the case of his famous model of racial “tipping points”–sociology. There is something impressive about a theory that explains human behavior without arbitrary limits.

3. Some people assume that the “players” in game theory are selfish. That is not true. A game-theoretical model can work very well to explain behavior driven by any motives. Usually, altruism makes human interactions turn out better, and then games are uninteresting–but not always. Consider, for example, the bad outcomes that can result when X and Y are picking a restaurant, and X only wants to eat at Y’s favorite place, and Y only wants to go where X wants to go. They may withhold information about their own preferences, causing a big mess, even though their motives are selfless.

4. If game theory has a limitation, it is not an assumption of selfishness but rather a presumption that the players have preferences and identities prior to interacting. For instance, if the players are the USA and USSR (as in Schelling’s classic work), then their identities are those of the two nations and their goals are assumed to be security, or domination, or whatever. However, a person’s identity as a representative of the USA or the USSR is not just given; it is forged as a consequence of social and historical change, and it can fall apart. Soviet officials were supposed to bear the identity of “international Communists”; they really identified with the USSR or narrowly with their individual security interests; and then suddenly around 1990 most began to see themselves as Russians or even Europeans, but not as Soviets. This was a massive political change.

Even given players with fixed identities, it is not obvious that they will want any particular goals (such as security, pleasure, dominance, honor or salvation). We may start wanting one thing and persuade ourselves to value something different. It’s not clear that these processes of identity-formation and preference-setting can themselves be modeled as games. When we deliberate about who we are and what we want, the reasoning is not strategic in the same way. However, this is not a criticism of game-theory, simply an argument that it belongs in a broader context.

Here’s a proposal for how to think about evolution if you want to believe in divine providence: Even if science explains the “efficient causes” of evolution, God can be the “final cause.”

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In a recent comment, Metta Spencer asks, “I?m … curious about your notion that systemizing ethical principles is not a good way to go. I would love to hear more about that. I suppose it?s more than just not being a Kantian, but i can’t fill in the blanks to guess what you mean, and there aren’t citations in these blog thingies.” I thought an answer would be worth a full post, so here goes. My position could be summarized as follows:

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