Functionalist accounts of morality reason circularly from norms to needs

Evidence

With the acceptance of this theoretical assumption and the related interpretive strategy, what followed was mostly circular reasoning, best perhaps expressed by Kluckhohn, who insisted that the moral norm or custom would not exist were they not functional (i.e. useful for the satisfaction of needs or for the taming of otherwise destructive behavioural tendencies – like, for example, the reduction of anxiety and the channelling of inborn aggressiveness achieved by Navaho witchcraft); and that the disappearance of a need which had originated and sustained the norm would soon lead to the disappearance of the norm itself. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 483

Categorization

• XREF: Circular functionalist reasoning parodies the ‘social capital produces trust’ style arguments from earlier readings — both insist norms express prior social needs. — connects to: Societal requirements transform into self-justifying norms devoid of social origin; Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 612; Moral obligations derive from objective ideality, not from society or individual will — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 356

Related

• Socialization manipulates but never produces moral capacity (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Societal requirements transform into self-justifying norms devoid of social origin #expands (0.85)
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality #qualifies (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 612
• Moral obligations derive from objective ideality, not from society or individual will #qualifies (0.70) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 356