Moral Relativism & Epistemic Relativism

I was trying to avoid the words "serve a function". There is a danger of evoking the equivalent of "a purposeful creator" if we go down that path.

That's right, but I never consider "functionalism" ( in the social sciences) to reflect the will of supernatural entities, only the on-going and politically contentious struggles between purposeful human actors. For example, all the Occupations of "wallstreet" throughout the country (and world) today are serving functions for political actors. Not that functionalism is without problems; it tends toward conservativism, with the implication that all extant institutions are successful/good because they would not exist otherwise.

...its again "language" encoded information where rules establish the working of a system does n´t matter it is DNA or memes...same thing...obviously !

...(concerning human beings pseudo special case) 2 more posts and you will end up speaking in the "ghost in the machine"...
seriously Fresco I honestly sometimes wonder how someone well educated like you buys that kind of stuff...no joking...
...there is no proof whatsoever that a computer is fundamentally different from a brain aside computing power and better software...quite the opposite...

...MEANING is BUILT from and in a SYSTEM of RULES like a LAW BOOK not particularly in brains...that SIMPLE !!!

Code be it mathematics, be it in law, be it in Computation, or in genes, or in memes is all the same **** !!!

Tell me if my spin on "naive realism" is itself excessively naive. When I see that the grass in my backyard is "green" I am talking about properties of grass, optics, my nervous system and much more, all of which create the experience we call the color green. A different kind of animal with a different kind of nervous system will have a different experience. As such, all my visual experience is the result of a complex set of processes. It is complex not simple. Naive realism is the doctrine of the epistemologically unwashed; it assumes that what one sees is simply and directly what is--naively not complexly.
On the other hand, I accept the zen perspective that what is complexly generated by the world of properties is ultimately/primitively/ and prereflectively simple just as it is. I hope you can see that this is paradoxical rather than contradictory.

Tell me if my spin on "naive realism" is itself excessively naive. When I see that the grass in my backyard is "green" I am talking about properties of grass, optics, my nervous system and much more, all of which create the experience we call the color green. A different kind of animal with a different kind of nervous system will have a different experience. As such, all my visual experience is the result of a complex set of processes. It is complex not simple. Naive realism is the doctrine of the epistemologically unwashed; it assumes that what one sees is simply and directly what is--naively not complexly.
On the other hand, I accept the zen perspective that what is complexly generated by the world of properties is ultimately/primitively/ and prereflectively simple just as it is. I hope you can see that this is paradoxical rather than contradictory.

In order to see things complexly rather than naively, does that require epistemic relativism?

If so, can we increase our knowledge of the natural world if we resign ourselves to relativism?

If you cannot even see the point that" information" has no independent ontological status (which to me is self-evident) there is no way you can commune with the well founded objections to computational cognitive modelling, or be willing to accept the evidence in support of such objections. As for ghosts in machines, you are the one with the machine concept, not me!

You are correct in describing the complexities of visual experience (see Varela for complexissimo), but the objections to naive realism go much further, they question the very boundaries of "the experience" per se as being an actual circumscribed "event" in the flow of everyday inter-actional engagement. As Maturana says, all "observation" is verbal.
We rarely (if ever) look at (i.e experience) grass and verbalise about its "green-ness" unless we are landscape artists or concerned gardeners. Such verbalization(internal or external) is about "action" not "knowledge"...it's about "what to do next regarding the grass", and the statement "grass is green" is merely a contrived disembodied "sample" for the very different purposes of misguided philosophers who might ignore contextual dynamics.

Independent of what is the question...a mind ? or rules ?
that is what I am talking about, and you are the one missing the point here Fresco.
...its not a problem of conscience or will rather a problem of rules and its processes or relations...I already explained in another post that information alone amounts to nothing without rules in place...

Yes, "information" has no independent ontological status. It is the result of our (socially constructed) reality-making process. Naive realism is simply egregious epistemology, but it is the way we model the world most of the time. In its more sophisticated pose, i.e., positivism, it provides a working ontology that I suppose works for most everyday engineering purposes, but it is bad philosophy.

I would think that the most advanced sorts of theoretical physicists are epistemic relativists. They most certainly are neither epistemic absolutists nor naive realists.

...information needs rules and context not minds in particular...that is a very narrow and biased picture of a group of entrenched would be philosophers about how information works...the argument is just silly...ontological independent status is irrelevant when analysing functions, which is what we can analyse...it is precisely the argument of information being an abstract "formless" quantity of something which to have functionality and meaning is highly dependent on how its organized as a system, that makes it a good argument candidate against a particular form of organizer like a mind which itself must be organized to organize something else...obviously before thinking mind is itself an algorithm of organized information...the argument also works against "God" as some sort of wilful volitional conscience separated from "creation" !

...you people just lack imagination and were brought up in a humanistic paradigm who is in its last legs...pointless to try and get you out of old habits...

Maybe so, but I can't imagine that there is only artificial intelligence, following rules and forming algorithims for their own sake. I can't imagine how they could exist except as expressions of human intelligence. Of course information needs context; nothing exists in a vacuum, but that context must contain motives and drives. You can call them a system if you wish, but their organization is more organic than it is logic.

...damn J there is no such thing as "artificial" intelligence...its all very natural and yes I believe its all far more abstract then we are willing to concede...

Perhaps you'd prefer the distinction between mechanical and organic intelligence. If not, you'd probably be comfortable have sex with a vacuum cleaner.

lol J...should I laugh or what ? is that playing "friends" or are you just tired ?

...what you call "artificial" I call poor understanding on how minds work, lack of knowledge and linear programming on software...for now...

Define "rules" without without using the anthropocentric categories: thing, entity, event, time, cause, or purpose.

You mean people have an experience of those terms right ? I don´t know who or what else could arrive to such similar experiences...

You've not answered the question. Unless you can account for "rules" in an non-anthropocentric manner, you cannot use the concept as an ontological substrate.