Isomorphic Society:

How to Think of Society as a Program

Introduction

When someone approaches a computer and uses a program, there is a fundamental assumption at play: the program has a purpose, and the program is successful if and only if it successfully tracks the very purpose inherent in its development. More generally, the program stands in a bijective relation to the needs of the program's user, and the program must present the user with an interface that successfully 'tracks' or 'addresses' the needs of the user. If one uses Gmail as an example, one could say that Gmail stands in an isomorphic relation to one’s communication needs; Gmail allows users effectively communicate. If Gmail failed at tracking the goal of communication, it would fail to be a successful program in the basic sense; it would be a equivalent to a hammer that didn't hammer, or a toaster that didn’t toast. Insofar as Gmail is built for Homo Sapiens, it is clear that Google must take the usability requirements of Homo Sapiens as critical when designing its interface; in the same way that a program stands in a bijective relation to a need, an interface must stand in a bijective relation to the usability conditions of its intended user.  An interface must be created as a model that tracks the relevant elements of an interactive domain, as Gmail does with functions like 'compose' and 'reply' in relation to the domain of communication, and must also take into account the users usability conditions when presenting the domain through an interface such that the domain can be easily and effectively manipulated by a user as means of attaining a pre-established goal.

Why does this discussion have a place in an essay on political philosophy? If one thinks of a citizen as certain kind of user, namely the user of their state or society, and one imagines this citizen approaching society with the ethos of democratic participation, one would surely expect the user to seek some sort of usable interface that would track their needs, and the needs of their citizenry. Is there not some sense in which one could critique a political structure with the same set of heuristics one would apply in critiquing a computer program? Firstly, does the current political structure stand in an isomorphic relation to the goals of its citizenry, and secondly, if one grants that it does, could one not be critical of the usability and effectiveness of this program in tracking the domain this goal presents its users with? Explicitly: a) is society as it is now a program a citizen would want to use, and b) does the current social structure meet the usability and utility requirements of its citizenry by presenting it with a meaningful and useful political interface?

In this essay, I will argue that thinking of democracy as analogous to a ‘political computer program’ that a society uses to track certain needs, whether they be basic or more ambitious, will lead society to be constructively critical of the failure of its current political structure to track these needs, and perhaps lead to a clearer idea of what society would have to be if it wanted to track its needs. I will first provide a short discussion of isomorphism in the philosophy of science and argue that it is a pregnant concept when applied within the discourse of political philosophy. I will then provide a brief discussion of the distinction between Historicism and Social Engineering as presented in Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, and argue that his notion of society as a project for a social engineer serves as a philosophically sober basis for thinking of society as a computer program. I will then attempt to show that thinking of society as a program leads to fruitful discourse by firstly answering the question "what makes a program fail?" by drawing from research in usability studies, and then use the information drawn to form a prima facie critique of the overall usability of the current Canadian political structure. I will argue that if Canadian citizens begin to apply the same usability standards they expect from everyday computer programs or applications to their own political structure, that they would a) reveal this current political structure as possessing certain obvious participatory shortcomings, and b) frame a critique of the state mechanism by its citizenry in a way that seems to encapsulate the ethos of a pure participatory democracy.

Isomorphism and Constructive Empiricism

Isomorphism, or simply a one to one relation, appears in Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic when Frege considers the idea that two numbers are said to be equal if they stand in a one to one relationship with each other. The principle of equinumerosity, which Frege borrowed from Hume and which Fregian scholars label as 'Hume's principle', is seen as a purely logical notion insofar as it employs isomorphism; 'numerical equality or identity must be defined in terms of one-one correlation'. (Frege section 63) This notion of isomorphism plays an important role in the philosophy of science as well insofar as Constructive Empiricism, the view of science argued for by Van Fraassen in Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism, illustrates science as a kind of model building grounded on isomorphism. Scientists build models of the world that represent causal regularities apparent in phenomena; a model functions as a causal mimesis of phenomena by having theoretical claims and phenomenal instances stand in an isomorphic relationship to each other. Models can therefore serve as the basis of prediction, but unlike scientific realism, do not prima facie commit scientists to an ontology; the goal is to have 'theories that are empirically adequate’' and not a 'literally true picture of what the world is really like'.(Curd 1067-1069)

This type of model building is seen in the work of cognitive scientists like Alison Gopnik, as well as proponents of 'theory theory' of concepts, and I think makes the logic of what a program is sensible; a program is built to map onto a need and serves as a tool to manipulate a certain kind of phenomena inherent in any complex goal. (Margolis 60) If one carries this analogy further, one begins to see politics, and more generally social organisation as a kind of model building; political structure must itself adequately model a system that would tend to society’s most basic needs, and furthermore, allow society to flourish on a larger more meaningful level as an open society. I will now present a brief account of Popper's account of historicism and social engineering, and argue that 'social engineering', as described by Popper, is an account that fits the bill of this kind of 'model politics'.

Historicism and Social Engineering

In part one of The Open Society and its Enemies, Karl Popper makes it clear that he will attempt to approach “some of the difficulties faced by our civilisation”. (1) Insofar as Popper’s humanism grounds the spirit of the work, it is fair that his scope extends to difficulties faced by all humanity, or more specifically all of human culture. While this makes his goal of bringing to light “some of the difficulties faced by our civilisation” even more ambitious, Popper’s distinction between historicism and social engineering does serve as a fruitful conceptual device, while also, I would argue, doing justice to the spirit of the texts and societies he approaches in his work. (1) Popper’s distinguishes on the one hand between a view of historical change as inevitable, historicism, and an ‘open’ view of history: social engineering. Popper’s first example of a historicist view is that of ‘the doctrine of the chosen people’. (8) The ‘doctrine of the chosen people’ is a view of history that sees a certain community as taking center-stage on the metaphysical plane of history, and that everything involved in society must gravitate around this narrative; the community, through territorial and ideological domination, grows in power and attempts to make itself a veritable center of gravity. Social engineering is less concerned with a metaphysical history, and is instead focused on the immediate needs of a society; the social engineer asks not what story their society belongs to and what they as a citizen need to do to make society fit this story, but instead sees society as a set containing factors like the well-being and critical attitude of its citizens as the fruits of its labour. This differing perspective is seen in the way members of both conceptual camps view social institutions; while a historicist ‘is inclined to look upon social institutions mainly from the point of view of their historical context’ and regard them with a certain degree of inevitability, the social engineer ‘will hardly take much interest in the origin of institutions’, and will rather ask: ‘If such and such are our aims, is this institution well designed and organised to serve them’? (23)

I would argue that Popper's distinction between historicism and social engineering surprisingly mirrors the distinction between constructive empiricism and realism stated in earlier discussion; in the same way that realism sees science as uncovering substantive truths of world, historicism sees society as also having its own set of historical truths that need to be addressed through social experiments that entail ‘large scale restructuring’. (Popper 158) On the other hand, social engineering is more seen as a project that works in a piecemeal process; the point of politics is getting social structure itself right, and not seeing society as a means to some sort of historical justice; the historicist will argue that the main distinction is between epistemic virtues and non-epistemic virtues, while the social engineer will argue the distinction is between pragmatic and non-pragmatic virtues.  

Social engineering looks like an ideal guiding concept to inform the creation of a participatory interface for a political structure. Popper makes a good case for social engineering as better serving the needs of humanism than historicism, and this makes sense within seeing why historicism fails as a guiding principle. In the same way that theory sentences are disposed of in Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricist philosophy science if they have no empirical cash value, I.e. they don't correspond with a set of causal regularities in the world, historicist claims should be disposed of by virtue of their existing no human need that they correspond to; insofar as Historicism posits the goal of society as external to social phenomena itself, Social Engineering is better by definition as a guiding principle of participatory democracy; it is concerned with making social phenomenon itself function ideally in relation to human needs, and not to mystical hypothesis.   

If social engineering is a program that itself maps onto social needs bijectively, then it's guiding principle of piecemeal social change must itself be mapped by an interface bijectively.

Piecemeal social engineering would require a certain kind of political mechanism; something that would be isomorphic to the needs of society in the same way a program is isomorphic to some need itself. Insofar as piecemeal change would require an interface, one could draw a lesson from the study of usability of programs and use this information to shape a constructive critique of our current political structure. In the next section, I will draw from the research of Pinelle, Wong, and Stach (2008) and argue that assessing canadian political structure in relation to the heuristics they develop reveals obvious ways in which the said political structure fails its citizens.    

Usability Heuristics and Political Structure

What makes a program work? The answer to this question can be drawn from the earlier discussion: a program’s success is measured by its interface’s usability, and the overall success of the program in tracking its perceived goal/end. Pinelle, Wong, and Stach’s research concerning usability conditions in video games tracked some key elements that, if ignored by developers, will surely lead to the game having problems widely reported by users as serious. Video games surprisingly provide great comparative material insofar as, much like Popper’s notion of piecemeal social change, game developers struggle with “constant interaction”(Pinelle 1453). In Heuristic Evaluation for Games: Usability Principles for Video Games, the authors develop ten heuristics video game developers should take into account when designing a video game. The ten ‘heuristics’ are assembled based on what their research deemed twelve central ‘problem categories’. While it is clearly beyond the scope of this essay to provide an analysis of the ‘usability’ or ‘functionality’ of Canada’s Political structure based on the above-mentioned heuristics that would do its complexity justice, I feel like a brief discussion of obvious ways in which it fails provides substantive criticism; if anything, the discussion will be humorous and at least show that a citizenry using usability heuristics to evaluate their own political structure would conceivably possess a more concrete notion of what needs to be addressed concerning the structural inadequacies of their society. I will now illustrate how Canada’s political structure prima facie falls under seven out of twelve problem categories developed by the authors, and conclude with a discussion of how the ten heuristics developed lead to a citizenry building a political program that is both usable and worth using.

Problem Category #8: does not provide enough information on game status

Auditor General Michael Ferguson recently announced that $3.1 Billion of military spending is unaccounted for. Treasury Board President Clement claimed that, while the money was indeed unaccounted for, there was no indication that it was misspent. While elementary reasoning demonstrates there is equally no evidence that it was not misspent, the issue here is simply that Canada’s political structure, if scrutinised under the lense citizens would apply to everyday programs, has failed in this instance to provide its users/citizens with information one could argue is necessary in holding its government accountable and effective. Would ‘Angry Birds’ be as successful if the application made it such that a sizeable fraction of the user’s points regularly disappeared without explanation?

Problem Category #9: does not provide adequate training and help

While Canada ranks highest in general education, a more specific type education is needed to ensure canadian citizens understand what principles underwrite a democracy and just how one gets engaged in a democratic political structure. In Political Knowledge and Participation Among Young Canadians and Americans, Henry Milner argues that there is a relationship between a poverty of ‘political knowledge’ through civic education, a citizen’s ‘know-how’ concerning their political mechanism, and low citizen participation in politics. While one may argue that civic education is second-place to actual engagement in independent social movements, the study shows that civic education is a much higher indicator of effective social interaction. (Milner 24) When one considers that election participation in Canada’s last election was a meagre 60%, it is clear that one should take Milner’s suggestion that “(r)esearchers and policy-makers in Canada would do better to take an approach centered on identifying those who lack the needed the necessary political knowledge and getting it to them” with the utmost seriousness. (24)

    Problem Category #1: unpredictable/inconsistent response to user’s actions

It is hard to see, as a voter, how rhetoric during election season translates into structural movement; while political parties might all claim that X is a priority, where X is anything from an environmental commitment to a belief in helping the middle class flourish, it is clear that all parties have a difference sense of what that consists of. Canadian politics could draw a lesson from Popper here insofar as platform pitches tend to be commitments to ideals, and not indicators of what a political party plans to actually do; middle-class flourishing is not something you can quantify or drive around and take a look at, while increased wages and social benefits are much more visible.

Problem Category #12: response to user’s actions not timely enough

Again, it is hard to see, as a voter, how rhetoric during election season will translate into concrete action. That withstanding, one has to ask if a democracy should be structured such that the practical concerns of a citizenry are only truly considered every election. One might argue that an elected representative ensures a ‘connected citizenry’, however, the Canadian political structure’s fumbling of crucial issues like Canada’s environmental policy/accordance with the Kyoto accord, the legalisation of marijuana, the reformation of its prison system, the role of the mining industry in shaping fiscal policy, as well as voter-reform itself, is arguably symptomatic of an unconnected citizenry and a government that either intentionally keeps users away, or simply fails to understand how to adequately meet the needs of a society with a structure that itself meets basic usability considerations.  

Decorum as an impediment to usability

One of the key elements present in Popper’s characterisation of social engineering is the role of arbitrariness in social institutions; every aspect of a political structure/institution should be judged by virtue of its utility in tracking tangible social needs. When one considers utility as a virtue and arbitrariness as a vice and assesses Canadian political structure on that basis, one begins to pick up on what may first seem to be a subtle odor of arbitrariness, but then later proves itself to be the overwhelming stench of arbitrariness upon a closer look. This criticism is highlighted by three of the problem categories at once: “#5: does not let user skip non-playable content”; “#10: Command sequences are too complex to manage”; and #2 Does not allow enough customisation”. In relation to problem category #5, I would argue that, while most Canadians have most likely never had the privilege of seeing how the house of commons works on an average day in Ottawa, a simple notion of just how much “decorum” is involved, whether it be the church-like “please rise” or “please be seated”, should send any pragmatist into fits of melancholia. In relation to problem category #10, I would argue that decorum, bureaucracy, and tradition, and not the inherent complexity of social engineering itself, is to blame for parliament being “too complex to manage”. This is hardly radical insofar as, if one were to even think of parliament as an open social project aimed at social efficiency, one would be faced with certain insurmountable tradition-based inhibitors; one can imagine the individual, who, at the beginning of the essay approached parliament as a useable interface, having to come to terms with the fact that they must wait for the Governor General to commence parliament, and furthermore, pledge allegiance to the Queen, before doing anything worth doing. How can anyone conceive of parliament as a game anyone would ever want to play if a functional society was their concern; Canadian political structure is in some sense to be inherently historicist. Finally, in relation to problem category #2, one can see this problem as perhaps the most grave of all. If one were to grant that Canada’s usability fell prey to the six previous problem categories, and a citizen felt like they should do something to change things, they would find their options in some sense limited by what is conceivably the least customisable of all interfaces; the ballot. “Wait!, the young voter exclaimed, “where is the box labelled ‘none of the above and drastically improve the way in which I, as a citizen, interact with my political structure’?” Canada’s political structure is so disconnected from any practical purpose, that it would surely leave Rousseau’s little Emile puzzled and wondering “what is this all about anyway?”  

Conclusion

Which, if any, of the heuristics presented by Pinelle, Wong, and Stach could address the usability shortcoming listed above? For one, parliament could be more transparent and “provide users with information on game status”. (1458) Parliament could also “provide consistent responses to the user’s actions”, “provide unobstructed views that are appropriate for the user’s current actions”, “allow users to skip non-playable and frequently repeated content”, “provide instructions, training, and help”, and most importantly, “provide intuitive and customisable input mappings”. (1458) Understanding these usability divides is key to making Canada a functional society. Canada’s political structure is not like many of the average programs and apps on the market today: it was not built with its user in mind. Perhaps it was originally, but it fails now. Political structure should be susceptible to intense revision and scrutiny; a sort of Popperian falsification that ensures a bijective relation between structure and social needs through intense revision and experiment of a political model’s aptitude.

Political structure should be open and its use should be encouraged and not discouraged; in fact, one might argue that if political structure is made in a way that is worth using, one wouldn’t have to sell political structure to their citizenry; it would simply seem like a natural activity; an extension of certain kind of authentic human intention or inclination; in the same way that ‘theory-theory’ illustrates human beings as ‘model builders’, and that this shapes a constructive empiricist approach to scientific discourse, it should also shape our political discourse. Politics in this sense is like science insofar as it requires expertise; clearly there will be good and bad political models, and these models would be judged by virtue of their tracking capacity; will political model M1 be as successful as M2 in meeting the needs of Society S? Politics in this spirit may have solved rhetoric; models have to prove their worth somehow. A society of course in some sense is required to decide what its needs are, and needs are more complex than mere bread and water if one considers flourishing as a goal; flourishing does not simply consist in having a certain degree of basic needs taken care of, but needs as more generally conceived: the need of having a society that is properly equipped in allowing its citizenry to relish the fruits of life through open and critical social discourse; something only possible by virtue of a political model that makes it possible.

Words: 3866

Work Cited:

Curd, Martin, and J. A. Cover. Philosophy of science: the central issues. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998. Print.

Frege, Gottlob. The foundations of arithmetic; a logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number.. 2d rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1960. Print.

Margolis, Eric, and Stephen Laurence.Concepts: core readings. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Print.

Milner, Henry. "Political Knowledge and Participation Among Young Canadians and Americans." Political Knowledge and Participation Among Young Canadians and Americans. IRPP, Nov. 2007. Web. 15 May 2013.

Pinelle, D., Wong, N., Stach, T. 2008. Heuristic Evaluation for Games: Usability Principles for Video Game Design. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), 1453-1462

Popper, Karl R.. The open society and its enemies,. [5th ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966. Print.