Functionalist explanation wrongly assumes social outcomes are necessarily good for society

Evidence

The title of this paper (Hardin 1980) should perhaps say “functional explanation” rather than “functionalist explanation,” because the latter suggests the blind assumption that whatever is good for a society must have happened and whatever behaviors a society develops must be good for it. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 996

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between a legitimate functional explanation and a fallacious functionalist leap; relevant to any institutional/norm emergence argument.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how trust-maintaining institutions (the doctor’s wife, law merchants, bourses) arise or fail to arise — warns against assuming institutions exist because they serve a function. — connects to: Intellectuals assume functional systems must be good, but efficient evil can persist — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1080
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 996