A Speculative Hypothesis of the Origin of Conscience

The hypothesis on the origin of conscience is Adam Smith's in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It is a genetic one, and to that extent at least, a contribution to evolutionary psychology. The following commentary is by D. D. Raphael in his commentary of that work, The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2007):

I turn now to Smith's distinctive development of the impartial spectator. In Chapter 6  I said that Smith's theory of moral judgement on one's own actions was too complicated to be acceptable; but I also said that the criticism arises from his account of approval and that his concept of the impartial spectator seems persuasive when taken with an unanalysed notion of approval. That persuasive element is what I see as his enduring contribution. It is a genetic theory of conscience, a speculative hypothesis on the origin of conscience.  Its essence lies in the social experience of being a spectator of the conduct of other persons and of knowing that others are spectators of one's own conduct. The experience leads us to imagine, not what others think of our deeds (we do not need imagination to learn of that), but what they would think if they had all the relevant information that each of us has from our own awareness of motive and intention. If they had that, they would be well-informed and impartial spectators—informed to a degree that they cannot be in fact, and impartial because they are not practically involved and so not liable to be swayed by self-interest, as the agent himself is. But if the agent is liable to be swayed by self-interest, how can he reach an impartian judgement? He can do so because the imagination can free itself from the ties of practical desires.

 Notice that there is an imaginative element involved here, an ability to imagine a hitherto non-existing perspective which combines other people's spectatorship with our own internal knowledge and self-assessment. Conscience involves an implicit, or rather structural and genetic, recognition of the difference between other perspectives and our own. It involves secrecy an dissimulation. The construction of  conscience is thus both a supplementation of others' uninformed perspectives, which are subordinated to our own privileged self-knowledge, and a correction (a sublation, in Hegelian terms) of our mere internal topsight, a blending of self-observation and self-judgement with social observation and (potential) judgment of our actions. 

What, then, endures from Adam smith's moral philosophy? It connects moral judgment with social relationship in a novel way, explaining its origin by reference to the reaction of spectators. The most interesting feature of the account is its application to conscience, judgement about one's own behaviour: it explains this as a complex reaction to the feelings of approval and disapproval by disinterested spectators. That gives conscience a social origin and a social function.

Raphael goes on to conclude his book arguing for a socio-psychological account of conscience rather than a merely logical analyis.  

This is surely appropriate, but I would like to put some additional emphasis on the dramatistic and interactional element in Smith's theory of conscience. And on the role of hypothetical reconstructions, and of the play of points of view, involving an imaginative and empathic projection into other minds (other social subjects and moral identities; i.e. the play of intersubjectivity).  These different perspectives are then integrated, with a reflexive turn, into a more comprehensive virtual theatre of social judgement, one which somewhat recalls Henry Fielding's description of social evaluation as a theatrical spectacle in Tom Jones (VII.i):

A Comparison between the World and the Stage

The world hath been often compared to the theatre; and many grave writers, as well as the poets, have considered human life as a great drama, resembling, in almost every particular, those scenical representations which Thespis is first reported to have invented, and which have been since received with so much approbation and delight in all polite countries.

In all these, however, and in every other similitude of life to the theatre, the resemblance hath been always taken from the stage only. None, as I remember, have at all considered the audience at this great drama.
But as Nature often exhibits some of her best performances to a very full house, so will the behaviour of her spectators no less admit the above-mentioned comparison than that of her actors. In this vast theatre of time are seated the friend and the critic; here are claps and shouts, hisses and groans; in short, everything which was ever seen or heard at the Theatre-Royal.

(...)
 
As for the boxes, they behaved with their accustomed politeness. Most of them were attending to something else. Some of those few who regarded the scene at all, declared he was a bad kind of man; while others refused to give their opinion, till they had heard that of the best judges.
Now we, who are admitted behind the scenes of this great theatre of Nature (and no author ought to write anything besides dictionaries and spelling-books who hath not this privilege), can censure the action, without conceiving any absolute detestation of the person, whom perhaps Nature may not have designed to act an ill part in all her dramas; for in this instance life most exactly resembles the stage, since it is often the same person who represents the villain and the heroe; and he who engages your admiration to-day will probably attract your contempt to-morrow. As Garrick, whom I regard in tragedy to be the greatest genius the world hath ever produced, sometimes condescends to play the fool; so did Scipio the Great, and Laelius the Wise, according to Horace, many years ago; nay, Cicero reports them to have been “incredibly childish.” These, it is true, played the fool, like my friend Garrick, in jest only; but several eminent characters have, in numberless instances of their lives, played the fool egregiously in earnest; so far as to render it a matter of some doubt whether their wisdom or folly was predominant; or whether they were better intitled to the applause or censure, the admiration or contempt, the love or hatred, of mankind.
Those persons, indeed, who have passed any time behind the scenes of this great theatre, and are thoroughly acquainted not only with the several disguises which are there put on, but also with the fantastic and capricious behaviour of the Passions, who are the managers and directors of this theatre (for as to Reason, the patentee, he is known to be a very idle fellow and seldom to exert himself), may most probably have learned to understand the famous nil admirari of Horace, or in the English phrase, to stare at nothing.
A single bad act no more constitutes a villain in life, than a single bad part on the stage. The passions, like the managers of a playhouse, often force men upon parts without consulting their judgment, and sometimes without any regard to their talents. Thus the man, as well as the player, may condemn what he himself acts; nay, it is common to see vice sit as awkwardly on some men, as the character of Iago would on the honest face of Mr William Mills.
Upon the whole, then, the man of candour and of true understanding is never hasty to condemn. He can censure an imperfection, or even a vice, without rage against the guilty party. In a word, they are the same folly, the same childishness, the same ill-breeding, and the same ill-nature, which raise all the clamours and uproars both in life and on the stage. The worst of men generally have the words rogue and villain most in their mouths, as the lowest of all wretches are the aptest to cry out low in the pit.

Pursuing the analogy, one might argue that conscience is that spectator "behind the scenes", experienced at theatricals, and not much surprised at human actions. These are contemplated with disapproval but also with a higher understanding attentive not merely to the image those human actions offer to the public, but also to more complex motivations and less public aspects of the same. The theatre of conscience understands the public evaluation received by actions and goes as far as to partially share it, but that public standpoint is synthesized with other perspectives which prevent conscience from being a only the voice of others in our mind, or nothing but the social evaluation of our actions from an external perspective.

La teatralidad del yo en Adam Smith

—oOo—