The Internal Panopticon: On the Perspectival Character of Consciousness, the Emergence of Intersubjectivity, and Conscience as a Mechanism of Self-Control

We argue that one of the main cybernetic functions of consciousness is the regulation of behavior and affect in a world inhabited by other conscious beings (friend and foe). This function, we contend, can only be carried out if a conscious being internalizes an understanding of others as potential observers and judges of its own behavior. This understanding, as phenomenology suggests, relies on a sensitivity to multiple points of view, actual and potential. This sensitivity, in its turn, requires a conscious being to be aware of itself, its current point of view, and a space of other possible points of view (including those it takes to be actually occupied by others). In the human case, and quite possibly in case of other animals, this inherent intersubjective capacity can develop into a mechanism for self-control via the internalization of a “generalized Other” (e.g., God, the Super Ego, Das Man, Le Grand Autre, “Polite Society”), an Other who “watches” and “judges” an agent “from within” and can also serve, via identification, as an “ideal self”. We discuss how such a tight and pervasive link existing between the phenomenology of self-perspective and the cybernetic functions of consciousness and conscience can be understood in terms of the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM). According to the PCM consciousness is structured by a projective 3-space, governed by the action of the corresponding projective transformation group, for information integration and planning in social and non-social contexts.