CHAPTER 

16

Functionalism
Robert A. Segal

It is usually assumed that, as an approach to religion, or to culture in general,

functionalism in the social sciences has proved not so much problematic as passé.
Functionalism has simply been superseded by structuralism, poststructuralism, and
postmodernism. Yet the appeal of functionalism as an explanation of the existence
or persistence of religion has remained firm.
This chapter focuses on the philosophical problems posed by functionalism. Some of
those problems are hoary. Others, while already recognized, were presented in their
classic form in 1959 by Carl Hempel. Only social scientists with philosophical proclivities
were ever affected by Hempel’s challenge. Their unanimous response has been to try to
meet the challenge, and the fate of functionalism has been assumed to rest with the
response to Hempel.
This chapter presents responses by philosophers themselves to Hempel. It
concentrates on the response by Robert Cummins, who defends functionalism in biology
and, by implication, in social science by recharacterizing it. That recharacterization
supposedly makes Hempel’s challenge irrelevant. What a functionalist approach to
religion guided by Cummins’ depiction of functionalism would look like is offered.
What is the status today of functionalism in the study of religion? The heyday of
functionalism was, roughly, the first half of the twentieth century. Certainly functionalist
accounts of religion still exist, and prominent contemporary social scientists
conventionally labelled functionalists include J. Milton Yinger, Bryan Wilson, Hans Mol,
Niklas Luhmann, I. M. Lewis, Marvin Harris, and Roy Rappaport. But functionalism as
a “cutting‐edge” approach to religion, or to culture as a whole, has long since been
­succeeded – in the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES by structuralism and in the EIGHTIES and

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Second Edition.

Edited by Robert A. Segal and Nickolas P. Roubekas.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
254 ROBERT A. SEGAL 

t­ hereafter by poststructuralism and postmodernism. One measure of the seeming dat-

edness of functionalism is that its advocates prided themselves on using a method that
was scrupulously scientific, whereas practitioners of poststructuralism and, even more,
of postmodernism pride themselves on their disdain for science.
Functionalism has thrived in at least three domains: philosophy, biology, and social
science. In philosophy functionalism is to be found in meta‐ethics, philosophy of sci-
ence, and philosophy of mind. In the philosophy of mind functionalism was pioneered
in the Sixties by Hilary Putnam (1967) and is associated with such figures as Jerry
Fodor and Ned Block. (Putnam himself subsequently repudiated functionalism, and
philosophical functionalists attack one another.) Functionalism here is an alternative to
behaviorism. It assumes that mental states exist but are “supervenient” on physical
ones: there are no mental states without physical ones.
The term “functional” means functionally equivalent: like different kinds of
computers, different kinds of brains – those of humans, animals, and Martians – can
still produce, or “realize,” the same mental states – for example, pain. Unlike the identity
theory of mind, a mental state need not correspond to just one physical state.
Functionalism has succeeded both behaviorism and identity theory as the leading
present‐day position in the philosophy of mind. Like functionalism in other fields,
functionalism in philosophy seeks to bring the discipline in line with up‐to‐date science.
In biology functionalism as an explanation of living entities generally is as popular
today as it ever was. It is usually tied to evolution, with survival as the ultimate criterion
of the function served. Functionalism as an idea, even if not so named, thus goes back
to Darwin.

History of Functionalism

In psychology functionalism, and of a kind akin to that in philosophy of mind, is

associated with the American psychologist James Angell. In sociology and social
anthropology, which are the mainstays of the approach in the social sciences,
functionalism is conventionally traced back to Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and
above all to his account of religion in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912).
Whether or not Durkheim really qualifies as a functionalist, he was taken as a func-
tionalist par excellence by one of the two key figures who formally introduced func-
tionalism to the study of religion: the English social anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe‐Brown
(1881–1955) (see Segal  1999). In his belatedly published The Andaman Islanders
(1922), which was based on notes from his fieldwork in 1906–1908 but which was
subsequently written up under the spell of Durkheim, he rejected the historical
approach then dominant in at least British anthropology. He sought to make social
anthropology scientific. The title of a posthumously published book says it all: A Natural
Science of Society (1957). He rejected as merely conjectural and therefore for him
unscientific the question of historical origin, which he always equated with the ques-
tion of origin per se.
Like his fellow pioneering functionalist in anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski
(1884–1942), Radcliffe‐Brown was reluctant to venture beyond observation even once
 FUNCTIONALISM 255

he had arrived on the veranda. Oblivious to the unabashed effort at reconstructing the
history, for example, of the earth in so tough‐minded a science as geology, he insisted
that only the present, not the past, can be studied scientifically. His credo: forgo
speculating about the origin of religion, and figure out what religion is doing now.
Yet it is tenuous to claim that function is observable. Rather, it, like cause, is inferred
rather than seen. Certainly the function cannot be garnered from informants, who may
not know why they believe and act as they do. Indeed, for Radcliffe‐Brown, following
Durkheim, the function is latent rather than manifest – to use the terms appropriated
(from Freud) by the functionalist sociologist Robert Merton (1949). The same is true for
Malinowski. A standard example of a latent function is the claim that the prohibition
against eating pig in ancient Israel was to prevent disease.
The biggest difference between Radcliffe‐Brown and Malinowski, whose
functionalism does not derive from Durkheim, is that the function for Radcliffe‐Brown
is exclusively social, whereas for Malinowski it is largely individual. Functionalists,
though not just functionalists, often refer to “needs,” which religion or anything else
serves to fulfill. For Radcliffe‐Brown, the needs are on the part of society. For
Malinowski, they are on the part of the individual and are largely biological. To
distinguish his brand of functionalism from Malinowski’s, Radcliffe‐Brown calls his
“structural‐functionalism.” Structure means social structure and not, as in
structuralism, the structure of the mind.
Seemingly, functionalism is mere common sense. Of course, religion serves a
function. What doesn’t? Common sense dictates that religion would die out if it ceased
earning its bread. But functionalism is not the same as function. First, functionalism
means not just attention but exclusive attention to function. Second, functionalism
means the claim that religion is not just helpful but outright indispensable to whatever
it effects. It is necessary. Third, functionalism means the claim that religion is not just
necessary but also sufficient for, say, stability. Without religion, no stability; with
religion, stability. To quote Radcliffe‐Brown, “[a] society depends for its existence on the
presence in the minds of its members of a certain system of [religious] sentiments by
which the conduct of the individual is regulated in conformity with the needs of the
society” (Radcliffe‐Brown  1922, 233–234). Yet by no means do all who get labelled
functionalists meet all three criteria.

Hempel’s Attack on Functionalism

Functionalism carried on buoyantly until 1959, when the philosopher of science

Carl Hempel (1905–1997) wrote “The Logic of Functional Analysis” (reprinted,
slightly revised, in Hempel  1965). Hempel discusses functionalism in biology and
social science but, writing prior to Putnam, not in philosophy. His criticisms of
biology and social science are the same. First, both fields are wrong to insist on a
different kind of explanation from that found in physical science. Functional
explanation, which seeks the purpose, or telos, of religion or anything else, is in fact
just another case of causal explanation, which seeks the origin  –  the recurrent
origin – of religion or anything else.
256 ROBERT A. SEGAL 

Second, even when functionalism acknowledges that it is offering a causal explana-

tion, the cause may be unprovable. Hempel is not objecting to unobservable explana-
tions per se. He allows for “reason‐explanations” of human behavior. But he insists that
directly unobservable causes be tied to observable laws, such as the purported effect of
the unconscious on action. He is also prepared to credit the heart with circulating the
blood and thereby keeping a vertebrate alive, though not with any intent on the part of
either the vertebrate or the heart.
Third and most important, the explanation that functionalism gives is fallacious. It
commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. For Hempel, a valid deductive
argument (by modus ponens) might take the following form:

PREMISE: If religion, then stability.

PREMISE: Religion.
CONCLUSION: Therefore stability.

Hempel would consider this argument a valid proof of the effect, or function, of
religion. Of course, the premises must be true for the conclusion to be not merely valid
but also true.
The explanation to which Hempel objects works in reverse:

PREMISE: If religion, then stability.

PREMISE: Stability.
CONCLUSION: Therefore religion.

This claim is invalid because the cause is deduced from the effect and not vice versa.
Because the argument is deductive, the conclusion must follow from the premises. What
is thus being claimed is not that stability may be caused by religion but that it must be
caused by religion. Yet how can other causes be ruled out?
The irony is that functionalism purports to avoid the issue of origin by limiting itself
to function, but the appeal to the function of religion to explain stability is really offered
as the origin of religion. Why is there stability? Because of religion. The origin may be
recurrent rather than historical, but origin it still is.
The fallacy lies not in making stability the necessary effect of religion but in making
religion the necessary cause of stability. Now religion may actually be the necessary
cause of stability, but proving it so requires ruling out other possible causes. Few
functionalists even try to rule out alternatives.
To cite an example from outside religion:

PREMISE: If John misses his bus, he will be late for work.

PREMISE: John is late for work.
CONCLUSION: John missed his bus.

Obviously, there could have been other reasons for his lateness.
Yet Hempel’s objection to functionalism is to more than causality. The fallacy of
affirming the consequent holds even for correlation and not only for causality. My
 FUNCTIONALISM 257

shorthand phrase “If religion, then stability” must be spelled out. The claim can be
simply that wherever there is religion, there is stability. That claim may be valid. Invalid
would be the claim that wherever there is stability, there is religion.
In functionalism the argument that religion produces stability should include
evidence not merely that stability is always present when religion is present but also
that religion must be present. For religion is supposed to be necessary, not merely
sufficient, for stability. But from even the sheer presence of religion in every case of
stability, how can other causes be excluded? How can, say, a reliable food supply be ruled
out as the cause of stability, either as a necessary cause or as a sufficient one, either in
place of religion or alongside it?
For nonfunctionalists, religion can be a sufficient cause rather than a necessary
one. Religion can even be less than sufficient. It can be just one cause among others.
But for functionalists, religion is both necessary and sufficient. This argument is falla-
cious because functionalists are arguing from the sheer coexistence of religion and
stability to causality. But sheer coexistence does not yield either necessity or likely even
sufficiency.
Hempel allows for explanations that are noncausal. But functionalism he treats as a
case of causal explanation. Yet his overall philosophical concern is with the logic of
explanation, be the explanation causal or not. He sees explanation as argument  –  a
view since challenged by, among many others, Wesley Salmon.
Yet for Hempel the conclusion in an explanation does not have to follow with
necessity. He works out probabilistic, or “inductive‐statistical” (I‐S), explanations, in
which the conclusion follows with merely high likelihood. Most causal explanations in
the social sciences, as well as some in the natural sciences, are probabilistic. But
functionalist explanations, as reconstructed by Hempel, are deductive, or “deductive‐
nomological” (D‐N) rather than probabilistic. They claim necessity.

The Response to Hempel from Religious Studies

What has happened to functionalism across the disciplines since Hempel’s attack? The
best‐known critic of functionalism from religious studies was Hans Penner (1971; 1989).
He assumed that most explanations of religion were still functionalist. He asserts that
“functional explanations of religions have maintained a powerful hold on most of the
human sciences” (Penner  1989, 104) and that “functionalism can be viewed as the
theory for explaining things in the social sciences” (Penner 1989, 106).
Penner can make his hyped claims about the continued pervasiveness of functionalism
in all of social “scientificdom” only by sloppily equating functionalism with function,
which is less than functionalism. Yet it is not even true that all social scientists tend to
the function of religion. For example, interpretivist social scientists are primarily
concerned with what religion expresses rather than with what it effects. They skirt the
issues of both function and recurrent origin. But among those social scientists who do
tend to the function – the majority of social scientists by far – by no means do all of them
ignore recurrent origin, which is to say by no means do they all merely subsume it
under function.
258 ROBERT A. SEGAL 

According to Penner, Hempel’s attack, far from acknowledged, goes unknown in

social science, not to mention religious studies. Penner equates functionalism with
Hempel’s characterization of it: “The model I shall use for this analysis is taken from
Hempel’s classic analysis on the logic of functionalism” (Penner 1989, 109). To defend
functionalism Penner thus tries to meet Hempel’s criticisms. He concentrates almost
exclusively on the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Penner considers various ways of refining functionalism to fend off Hempel’s attack.
But he deems all proposed ways to be failures. He quotes a social scientist, one of the
apparent few even aware of Hempel, who concludes that “functionalist notions should
be excluded altogether from the social sciences.” Adds Penner: “I think this is good
advice” (Penner  1989, 123). Oblivious to explicit social scientific alternatives to
functionalism such as rational choice theory, which concentrates on manifest functions,
he turns instead to structuralism, which has nothing to do with function. (For a defense
of functionalism in religion against the dismissal of it by rational choice theorists like
Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge, see Wilson 2002.)

The Response to Hempel from Anthropologists

Among anthropologists, the most prominent response to Hempel has been the lifelong
attempt of celebrated anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1968;  1984;  1999) to meet
Hempel’s challenge. Like Penner, Rappaport, a self‐proclaimed functionalist, assumes
that functionalism in social science has been killed off by Hempel and can be resur-
rected only if Hempel’s criticisms are answerable. Hempel is almost the sole critic whom
Rappaport cites. The fate of functionalism thus rests on responding to Hempel. But
where Penner concludes that Hempel’s challenge cannot be met, so that functionalism
must be abandoned, Rappaport concludes that it can be met – even if, most oddly, he
initially ignores the charge of affirming the consequent.
In his first book, Pigs for the Ancestors (1968), Rappaport actually misses Hempel’s
central criticism: that functionalism is fallacious. In the second, much enlarged edition
of Pigs (1984) Rappaport at last considers the challenge but hardly meets it. In his last
book, the posthumously published Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999),
he now asserts that Hempel’s functionalism had been meant to offer only a formal and
not a causal explanation of the relationship between one variable and another, such as
between religious ritual and stability. Hempel could have fooled me!

The Response to Hempel by Philosophers

Neither Rappaport, writing as late as 1999, nor Penner, writing as late as 1989, is
aware of responses to Hempel by philosophers, not just social scientists. (Penner used to
love castigating fellow scholars of religion for their ignorance of contemporary
philosophy.) Philosophers have bypassed Hempel’s challenge by recharacterizing
functionalism in biology, if not yet in social science, let alone religious studies.
 FUNCTIONALISM 259

To begin with, there are problems besetting functionalism that antedate the ones
noted by Hempel. Some of these problems presuppose what later gets questioned: that a
functionalist explanation is a causal explanation. First is the problem of backward
causation: present behavior is explained by future goals, so that the effect precedes the
cause. A person prays to God in order to get well. The goal, which should come at the
end of the behavior, comes before the behavior. A heart beats to fulfill the goal of
circulating the blood. But there is a functionalist reply to these cases: in human behavior
the goal is an intention, which does precede the action. To act is to act on the intention.
Therefore backward causation is not a problem.
Second is the problem that function means more than effect. If on the one hand
functionalism is thereby spared having to find a function for every effect, such as the
beating of the heart, on the other hand functionalism is obliged to explain those effects
that do serve functions.
Writing in 1975, philosopher Robert Cummins seeks to recharacterize functionalism
in a different way from Hempel. He begins by presenting the two assumptions made by
all existing philosophical critics of functionalism, not just by Hempel:

(a) The point of functional characterization in science is to explain the presence of the

item (organ, mechanism, process or whatever) that is functionally characterized.
(b) For something to perform its function is for it to have certain effects on a containing
system, which effects contribute to the performance of some activity of, or the
maintenance of some condition in, that containing system. (Cummins 1975, 741)

According to Cummins, the uncritical “adherence” to these assumptions “has crippled

the most serious attempts to analyze functional statements” (Cummins 1975, 742).
Hempel assumes (a) that a functional analysis, despite the association of functionalism
with function rather than with cause, claims to be explaining why religion or the heart
exists or persists. He also assumes (b) that a functional analysis claims that religion or
the heart serves a function which not merely has an effect but also contributes to the
maintenance of society or the organism. Hempel’s indictment of functionalism for
affirming the consequent requires both assumptions. If (a) functionalism does not
claim to be explaining religion or the heart, then the stability of society or the health of
the organism is not being invoked to explain religion or the heart. If (b) functionalism
does not claim to be explaining stability or health, then religion or the heart is not being
invoked to explain stability or health.
Hempel argues that functionalism, taken as explaining religion or the heart, faces a
Hobson’s choice: the functionalist argument is either invalid or likely false. The
argument is invalid if it concludes from the existence or persistence of stability or health
that religion or the heart is the cause. Something else might be the cause. It is not
fallacious to attribute stability or health to religion or the heart. It is fallacious to deduce
religion or the heart as the cause from stability or health itself. At the same time it is
surely false to maintain that religion or the heart is the only possible cause. To quote
Cummins, “[i]t is false, for example, [to claim] that the heart is a necessary condition for
circulation in vertebrates, since artificial pumps can be, and are, used to maintain the
flow of blood” (Cummins 1975, 743).
260 ROBERT A. SEGAL 

What to do? Cummins proposes rejecting assumptions A and B alike. Rather than
making functionalism the explanation of the heart, he makes functionalism the
explanation of circulation. Start with the heart as already present rather than seek to
account for it. Appeal to the heart to explain circulation and in turn health rather than
appeal to circulation and in turn health to explain the heart. Cummins rejects
assumption A: that functionalism seeks to explain the heart by invoking the effect of the
heart. Instead, he argues that, however the heart arose or continues to arise, organisms
with hearts – hearts that circulate the blood – have a higher chance of survival than
organisms without hearts or at least without “functioning” hearts.
Cummins takes the case of protozoans, all of which have “contractile vacuoles” for
removing excess water. The contractible vacuole

occurs in marine protozoans that have no excess‐water problem but [indeed] the reverse
problem. Thus the function and effect on survival of this structure [i.e., vacuole] is not the
same in all protozoans. Yet the explanation of its presence is almost certainly the same.
This fact reminds us that the processes actually responsible for the occurrence of
contractile vacuoles in protozoans are totally insensitive to what that structure does.
(Cummins 1975, 750)

The presence of the contractile vacuole in all protozoans is not being explained.
What is being explained is why, with the vacuole, certain protozoans “are able to keep
from exploding in fresh water” (Cummins 1975, 751).
Cummins thus distinguishes the role that an entity plays from the creation of it.
He  thereby disentangles function from cause  –  the link that Hempel assumes.
Functionalism for Cummins is still an explanation, but now of the role that, to revert to
the prior example, the circulation of blood by the heart plays in the health of the organ-
ism. The heart is taken as a subsystem within the organism as a whole. There are other
subsystems, and each one contributes to the health and, in Darwinian fashion, the sur-
vival of the organism. But each contributes as a mere part. The functional question is
not why a single part like the heart is present but what role the circulation of blood by
the heart plays in the maintenance of the organism. The heart has no function of its
own and is not just, say, a contributing function. Cummins thus rejects assumption B.
Cummins gives the “transparent example” of assembly‐line production:

Production is broken down into a number of distinct tasks. Each point on the line is
responsible for a certain task, and it is the function of the workers/machines at that point
to complete that task. If the line has the capacity to produce the product, it has it in virtue
of the fact that the workers/machines have the capacities to perform their designated tasks,
and in virtue of the fact that when these tasks are performed in a certain organized
way – according to a certain program – the finished product results. (Cummins 1975, 760)

Cummins’ version of functionalism starts with the equivalent of society or the

organism as a whole and breaks down its operation into its components. The explanation
is not why there are workers of type X or machines of type Y  –  questions that
functionalism conventionally characterized tries to answer  –  but what specific tasks
 FUNCTIONALISM 261

each does that, together with the tasks performed by all other workers and machines,
function to produce the product.
Cummins’ brand of functionalism has been faulted on many grounds. For example,
almost anything can be fitted into a system and thereby be part of something that serves
a function. The power of functionalism, which rests on the distinction between those
things that have functions and those that have mere effects, is thereby dissipated.
Conversely, by denying parts of a system their own functions, Cummins cannot
distinguish functions from mere accidents  –  again, the problem of distinguishing
functions from mere effects. Furthermore, the attribution of a function to even just all
living things, such as to the heart, seems a return to anthropomorphism.
Responses to Cummins abound. While published two years earlier than Cummins’
article, Larry Wright’s “Functions” (1973), followed by his “post‐Cummins” book
Teleological Explanation (1976), has been enlisted to meet some of the problems in
Cummins’ analysis. Wright cites Hempel but lists him with half a dozen others and
gives more attention to two of those others. Applied to Cummins, Wright is able, for
example, to distinguish functions from accidental effects and is thereby saved from
having to find a function for everything. The heart exists to pump blood. That it also
makes noise is a mere effect. But Wright returns to the traditional notion of functional
explanation as causal and of specific parts as having their own functions. The heart still
exists to pump blood.
In “In Defense of Proper Functions” (1989) and other works Ruth Millikan likewise
returns to the traditional view of a functional explanation as causal. To solve the
problem of backward causation that Wright unavoidably reintroduces, she enlists the
distinction between types and tokens, or categories and instances. Instead of having to
assert that pumping blood causes the heart to exist and persist, she asserts that the
function of pumping blood is that of the category heart. Any member of that category,
or family, inherits the function from its forbears, so that past tokens have a future effect
on present ones. The past causes the present and not, as in backward causation, the
reverse. (For the debate among Cummins, Wright, Millikan, and others, see Allen,
Berkoff, and Lauder 1998.)

Cummins’ Functionalism Applied to Explanations of Religion

As philosophers rather than biologists or social scientists, Cummins, Wright, and

Millikan are scarcely proposing new explanations, or theories, of living things or of
religion. Rather, they are offering new ways of conceptualizing a functionalist theory of
anything. Let me suggest what a theory of religion from the standpoint of Cummins,
the most radical of the three, would look like.
A theorist could still raise the issue of the origin of religion. If enough information
existed, a theorist could offer a historical explanation of religion. Obviously, there are
many historical explanations of specific religions. A theory would mean a historical
explanation of religion per se. But ordinarily, the origin that a theory gives is recurrent
262 ROBERT A. SEGAL 

rather than historical. The claim would be not that religion originated in, say, Africa but
that religion anywhere and any time originates in the same way.
The “same way” would commonly mean for the same reason, which would commonly
mean to fulfill the same need. Are we, then, back to the fallacy of affirming the
consequent? Not automatically. That fallacy lies not in the claim to know the origin – the
recurrent origin – of religion but in the claim to know the origin on the sheer basis of
the function. More precisely, the fallacy lies in the claim to know the necessary origin of
religion on the sheer basis of the function. A theory could still vaunt the origin it gives
as necessary, but only if it could rule out alternative possibilities. Unless a theory can do
so, it must be giving only a probabilistic explanation. Most explanations of human
behavior are probabilistic, but they are therefore inductive rather than deductive and so
are immune to the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Applied to religion, Cummins’ approach to biology would skirt the issue of
origin – even of recurrent origin – altogether. A “Cumminsist” would do the opposite of
honing in on religion and seeing what it does. The focus would not be on what religion
itself does, and even if religion were presented in its context, as has long been de rigueur.
Placing religion in context usually means presenting the setting in which religion
operates. The equivalent of the context for Cummins is functional. The context is not
the usual one of who is religious, where religion takes place, and how religion manifests
itself. The context is the ultimate function within which religion operates.
Take an example. Max Weber (1963) maintains that “higher religion” serves to give
meaningfulness to life, above all in the form of making sense of suffering. Religion offers
a theodicy (see Weber 1963, ch. 9). Of course, Weber puts religion in the context in the
conventional sense of the word context – namely, the circumstances. Religion beyond
the earliest, magical stage is the religion of a group, or “congregation.” Religion takes
place among self‐conscious members of the group. Robinson Crusoe, if religious, would
be religious at only the magical stage. His context would preclude religiosity of any
other kind. Only once there is a group can there be ethics, metaphysics, priests, and
prophets. The brand of religion can also be matched up with class – another context.
Upper‐class intellectuals are the class most concerned not with suffering, which is
universal, but with a formal, systematic response to it:

The salvation sought by the intellectual is always based on inner [versus material] need,
and hence it is at once more remote from life, more theoretical and more systematic than
salvation from any external distress, the quest for which is characteristic of nonprivileged
classes. The intellectual seeks in various ways . . . to endow his life with a pervasive meaning,
and thus to find unity with himself, with his fellow men, and with the cosmos. It is the
intellectual who transforms the concept of the world into the problem of meaning.
(Weber 1963, 124–125)

A Cummins‐inspired approach, by contrast, would present Weber’s theory differently.

It would set the need for meaningfulness itself in the context of something bigger. If one
were evolutionarily inclined, one would set it in the context of mental health, which
would be tied to survival. To assert that religion abets mental health would be missing
 FUNCTIONALISM 263

the point, which would be that religion must be linked to other institutions that do the
same. Simply to assert that other things besides religion also contribute to mental health
would likewise be missing the point, which would be that religion abets mental health
only when it works together with other institutions. Religion could still be doing its
distinctive “bit,” but its bit would not amount to a function in its own right, any more
than the production of parts X by workers Y would amount to functions in their
own right.
The focus would be on the fitting of religion with other “components” along a single,
meaning‐producing assembly line. Perhaps religion contributes to meaningfulness by
postulating god and attributing to god the world in which suffering occurs, a system of
rewards and punishments, a soul, paradise, and life after death. Religion would be
looked at practically. “What can it do?” would be the question. The conclusion of a
Cummins‐style functionalist explanation would not be that religion, either at one stage
or always, functions to provide meaningfulness in life, let alone that religion arises to
provide meaningfulness in life, not to say that existing meaningfulness in life is caused
by religion. The conclusion would be that religion, like the beating heart, is part of a
system that as a whole is capable of providing meaningfulness.
Religion could have arisen for any reason, such as to provide food or to cure illness.
The origin of religion would be decoupled from its present role. One would not merely be
allowing for the creation of new needs in the course of the history of religions, as Weber
does with the need for meaningfulness. One would not be considering religion as serving
any need, be it an original need or a present need, let alone a distinctively religious need.
Religion would be seen as doing something that it can do only because, however it got
there, it is now part of a system far bigger than itself.

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