Louise Costelloe-Ward
This paper proposes an alternative for describing and categorising leverage points, using concepts from ethical philosophy. I’ll be considering how a reworking of Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative can be used to consider where is best to intervene when faced with a choice of leverage points. This reworking is based around placing more emphasis on the relationship between “can” and “should”, and how these concepts can be combined to resolve challenges around describing and choosing types and methods of leverage.
The first section sets out the relationality between “can” and “should”, and how this can be expressed in systems thinking terms. Rather than assuming we intervene as systemic designers, we often consider where it is better not to, or to deprioritise some interventions in favour of others. This is commonly expressed as “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. I describe how this paper will refer to acting and not acting as a spectrum, rather than a dichotomy, with some examples. I’ll consider how inaction and the more passive end of the action/inaction spectrum have a role in systemic dynamics – the interplay of “can” and “should” already displays itself when designers look at how systemic change happens. This leads to the question of whether a more comprehensive theory can be created to describe this interplay of “can” and “should”.
The second section starts with a recap of Kant’s Categorical Imperative and an acknowledgement of Kant’s privileging a white, male perspective on decision-making. I’ll discuss John Rawls’ reuse of Kant’s concepts to incorporate the full range of decision makers, and how this sets a precedent for repurposing the Categorical Imperative in social contract and systemic settings, as an alternative to utilitarianism. Then I examine the distinction between the Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives, drawing the connections to “can” and should”. This discussion delineates potential ethical criticisms of systemic design and tensions in our current ways of resolving these criticisms. I’ll look at concerns about systemic design and systems practice seeming overly instrumental – treating people as things. Design may offer a solution to these issues, if we can knit together the principles of user centred design with the broader perspective of systemic design. This elevation of design leads to a central question of how to knit things together – to relate “can” to should”. I go on to suggest a potential solution by reframing the Categorical Imperative. This reframing is based on characterising our considerations of leverage points as based on the interplay of “can” and “should”. The “should” leads to choices that can be universally willed, bringing a new perspective to questions about how designers intervene in a system.
The third and final section looks at the potential opportunities opened up by considering the interplay of “can” and “should” within systemic design. This will refer to a previous article by Ryan Murphy in Contexts (Murphy, 2022), which was the original spark for this paper. Leaping off from Murphy’s suggested research agenda, the reframed Categorical Imperative leads to new options for creating a typology of leverage points, as well as a potential method to work out which leverage points are likely to be most effective at creating lasting systemic change. There are other opportunities and questions that arise from applying the lens of “can” and “should” to systemic design. I’ll briefly mention these at the end of this paper as areas for further discussion.
Keywords: leverage, systemic change, systems theory, systemic ethics RSD: Methods & Methodology