{
  "id": "conscience.internalized",
  "term": "conscience",
  "sense": "internalized",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 20,
  "domain": "psychology",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "a wall moved inside the system, a boundary once kept by others and now maintained by the self-model, which is why it holds where no others are looking.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "wall.range-end",
      "motion.movement",
      "inside.spatial",
      "system.organized",
      "boundary.limit",
      "once.temporal",
      "keep.maintenance",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "self.personal",
      "model.representation",
      "hold.physical",
      "look.visual",
      "time.dimension"
    ],
    "interaction": "An externally enforced boundary is copied into the self-model, which takes over its upkeep, so the wall keeps holding in exactly the situations where no external enforcer can see.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "observer-independent enforcement",
      "internalized boundary upkeep",
      "self-carried wall"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Drivers stop at red lights on empty roads at night with no camera and no traffic.",
      "domain": "society"
    },
    {
      "text": "An accountant flags her own error in figures no auditor would ever have checked.",
      "domain": "business"
    },
    {
      "text": "A chess player announces a touched piece in an online game where no arbiter could know.",
      "domain": "sport"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "conscience",
    "consciences"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5:curated-selfmodel",
    "date": "2026-08-22",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "curated self-model expansion"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-conscience.internalized"
}