Or, alternatively, some common class that lets me express that a type is boring (i.e., inhabited by precisely one fully-defined value)? lens has Settable, whose law ensures the type involved has a boring representation (in the sense of representable functor), but is there a more fundamental way? class Boring x where inhabitant :: x instance Boring () where inhabitant = () instance Boring (Proxy a) where inhabitant = Proxy instance Boring y => Boring (x -> y) where inhabitant = const inhabitant instance (Boring x, Boring y) => Boring (x, y) where inhabitant = (inhabitant, inhabitant) instance Boring x => Boring (Const x y) where inhabitant = Const inhabitant instance Boring x => Boring (Identity x) where inhabitant = Identity inhabitant ...