The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [10]
Why Are We Scared of Gohma?
None of these three theories can satisfactorily answer the questions posed at the beginning of this chapter. Earlier, I asked why our eyes widen and our heart beats faster when we see the fire-breathing scorpion Gohma rise above us. We don’t run away from the screen, so the illusion theory must be wrong in saying that we temporarily think Gohma is really dangerous. We are more scared of actual monsters than the thought of monsters, so the thought theory can’t explain the whole story. And if our fear involuntarily causes our heart to race, that emotion hardly seems like “pretending.”
The main problem with these three theories is that they implicitly characterize the mind as monolithic and discuss only the conscious mind in their explanations. Under the guise of concepts such as imagination and thought, these theorists gloss over the variety of mental activity and the numerous unconscious processes that are part of our emotional responses to artworks.
The illusion theory says that since we react emotionally to artworks, as we watch them we must think they are real. The assumption is that our conscious judgments about an artwork must fully accord with all aspects of our emotional response. The pretend theory says that we know that the artworks are not real, so our emotional responses to them must be pretend. Again, the premise is that emotional responses are based on beliefs and must be consistent with conscious judgments. The thought theory says that we emotionally respond to both artworks and reality because both generate evocative thoughts or ideas. Although this is true, the theory gives no account of why we respond differently to artworks and reality, and it does not discuss the role of unconscious mental activity. The theory avoids the question of why our responses to artworks are partially but not fully like those to real life.
A Multi-Level Mind
The concept that the mind is not monolithic but has potentially competing aspects goes back at least to Plato, who offered a model of the mind in The Republic. Plato notes that people can be thirsty yet not drink, and some can be happy in their suffering. Plato also describes Leontius, who was simultaneously repulsed by rotting corpses and yet wanted to look at them.8 Plato concludes that the mind (or, as he called it, the soul) must have separate components that are motivated by different goals.
Cognitive science, which construes the brain as an information-processing device, developed the idea that the mind has multiple systems, in part through the notion of mental modules as described by Jerry Fodor in The Modularity of Mind.9 Fodor suggests that our minds include a number of relatively separate information-processing modules which process information without feedback from higher-level mental processes. An optical illusion can illustrate this concept:
In this figure, the diagonal lines are parallel even though they don’t look parallel. If we use a ruler, we can convince ourselves that they are parallel, but even if we know that they are, it’s impossible for us to see them as such. Although our conscious judgments tell us that the lines are parallel, our visual systems perceive them otherwise. This example shows how two mental systems can come to contrary conclusions about the same object.
The notion that the mind has multiple levels helps us explain our emotional responses to videogames and other artworks. Torben Grodal has suggested that there are important connections between psychology and art which can help us understand what happens when we watch representational art.10 According to Grodal, when we perceive something in the world, we make an evaluation, perhaps non-consciously, about whether we are perceiving