Sorry. I know you think that's a straw man, and my misapprehension not yours. Not sure how to get past it. — bongo fury

Is there a Cartesian theatre when we say that we feel pain and that pain is a sensation? There's no philosophical difference between feeling a sensation and hearing a sensation or seeing a sensation. The nouns simplify signify a different modality of perception. It might not be the ordinary way of speaking but that's just an arbitrary fact about the English language that doesn't reveal, dictate, or entail deeper, ontological or epistemological facts about our interaction with the world.

No we shouldn't, we should just clarify whether we are talking about whether they have certain physical features, causing certain kinds of acoustical (sound) event, or about the sound events themselves. — bongo fury

Then you completely side step the epistemological problem of perception and ignore the actual, substantive disagreement between direct and indirect realists. Arguing over the grammatically correct way to talk about perception is meaningless. That's the language trap as @Pie mentioned.

But the GOP splintered after the rape and incest exceptions remained in the bill Thursday when an amendment failed that would have stripped out those exceptions.

Some of these people are fucking insane. They wanted to strip exceptions for rape and incest?

Try Rawls, Hobbes, Rousseau. — Benkei

Perhaps:

Thus I shall always use the difference principle in the simpler form, and so the outcome of the last several sections is that the second principle reads as follows:

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

...

The difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as in some respects a common asset and to share in the greater social and economic benefits made possible by the complementarities of this distribution. Those who have been favored by nature, whoever they are, may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well. No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society. But, of course, this is no reason to ignore, much less to eliminate these distinctions. Instead, the basic structure can be arranged so that these contingencies work for the good of the least fortunate. Thus we are led to the difference principle if we wish to set up the social system so that no one gains or loses from his arbitrary place in the distribution of natural assets or his initial position in society without giving or receiving compensating advantages in return. — Rawls, A Theory of Justice

We already have two active discussions on the topic so I’m closing this one.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13096/is-there-an-external-material-world-/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13247/phenomenalism/p1

One possible test for whether we are stuck in a mere language trap is to look at the practical ramifications of this or that position (a pragmatist insight.) — Pie

I'm not sure if there's any connection here. Is the disagreement between mathematical realism and mathematical nominalism, or between scientific realism and scientific instrumentalism, or between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics just a "language trap" despite there being no practical ramifications by any side of the debate?

I don't think it makes a difference to our way of life which of transcendental idealism and naive realism (or other) is the case, and yet the disagreement between these positions isn't just a "language trap".

The "language trap" is arguing over which of "I hear the drill" and "I hear the sounds made by the drill" and "I hear auditory sensations" is correct, whereas we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. I think naive realism about hearing is false; drills don't have the auditory features that we hear them to have. And I don't think that vision works any differently (in any philosophically significant sense; obviously there's the physical difference that hearing involves stimulation by sound and vision involves stimulation by light).

This is why I said in either this or the other topic that too many people are getting lost in irrelevant arguments over grammar and vocabulary. It's like arguing over whether we read words or read about history. This isn't a dichotomy. We do both. This quote from Austin leads us into a few simple examples:

And the other point is that, partly no doubt for the above reason, the notion of indirect perception is not naturally at home with senses other than sight.

Do we smell the pie or do we smell the chemicals that are floating in the air? Do I hear the radio or do I hear the music that it plays? And even with vision: do I see myself in the mirror or do I see my reflection? These are all equally correct.

This is why I think the issue of perception needs to be addressed in such a way as to address the epistemological problem; is the world independently as it appears, and if so can we trust that our experiences are accurate?

And in fact, this is where I disagree with Austin above. I would instead say that it is direct realism that is not naturally at home with senses other than sight, where direct realism is understood as claiming that the world is independently as it appears. Whereas there might be a case to argue that an apple independently has a shape and colour as it is seen to have, can we say the same about its taste and smell? Or is the way an apple tastes and smells determined as much by the perceiver?

I think that this very limitation of direct realism is why this short introduction says "naïve realism is a theory in the philosophy of perception: primarily, the philosophy of vision" and "as for whether there can be naïve realist theories of senses other than vision, this is an issue that awaits a more detailed exploration" and why the SEP article on auditory perception says "the unique phenomenology of olfaction and smells has been used to argue that vision is atypical in supporting the transparency of perceptual experience (Lycan 2000, 282; cf. Batty 2010) and that perceptual objectivity does not require spatiality (Smith 2002, ch 5). Lycan (2000) even suggests that the philosophy of perception would have taken a different course had it focused upon olfaction instead of vision (see also Batty 2011)."

Whereas I don't think that indirect theories like the sense-datum theory have any special difficulty with non-visual senses. Whether sights or sounds, smells or tastes, it's all just sense data brought about by sensory stimulation and brain activity.

The point to my argument is that the rule all rules have exceptions ultimately contradicts itself, leading us to the conclusion there are rules without exceptions. — Agent Smith

Perhaps there's just one rule without an exception, that rule being "for every rule except this one there is an exception".

So how could we ever come to the conclusion that every rule has an exception? Because we'd also have to find an exception to the rule that every rule has an exception, i.e. find a rule that doesn't have an exception. But then we'd never come to the conclusion that every rule has an exception in the first place.

1. Every rule has an exception (premise)

1 is a rule, ja? — Agent Smith

No, I think Bartricks is right. A rule prescribes, it doesn't describe. That every rule has an exception, were it true, is a description, not a prescription, and so 1 isn't a rule.

Although, I suppose, you could make a rule that says that every rule must have an exception, but then it's up to you if this rule applies to itself or just to every other rule, and so it's up to you if you want to introduce a contradiction or not.

A foil for the indirect realists. — Andrew M

So I'm discovering. — Isaac

If you're suggesting that philosophers don't make these kinds of claims, and that they are just a strawman fabricated by indirect realists, then maybe you should read Allen's A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour:

This book develops and defends the view that colours are mind-independent properties of things in the environment that are distinct from properties identified by the physical sciences. This view stands in contrast to the long-standing and wide spread view amongst philosophers and scientists that colours do not really exist—or at any rate, that if they do exist, then they are radically different from the way that they appear.

Or Martin's The Reality of Appearances:

According to naïve realism, the actual objects of perception, the external things such as trees, tables and rainbows, which one can perceive, and the properties which they can manifest to one when perceived, partly constitute one’s conscious experience, and hence determine the phenomenal character of one’s experience. This talk of constitution and determination should be taken literally; and a consequence of it is that one could not be having the very experience one has, were the objects perceived not to exist, or were they to lack the features they are perceived to have. Furthermore, it is of the essence of such states of mind that they are partly constituted by such objects, and their phenomenal characters are determined by those objects and their qualities. So one could not have such a type of state of mind were one not perceiving some object and correctly perceiving it to have the features it manifests itself as having.

...

Focusing on the tower, I can note its distinctive shape and colouring; turning my attention inward, and reflecting on the character of my looking at the tower, I can note that the tower does not disappear from the centre of my attention. The tower is not replaced by some surrogate, whose existence is merely internal to my mind, nor are its various apparent properties, its shape and colours, replaced by some merely subjective qualities. So my perceiving is not only a way of providing me with information about an external world, when my attention and interest is directed towards action and the world; in its very conscious and so subjective character, the experience seems literally to include the world.

These are the direct realist views that then gave rise to indirect realist views like the sense-datum theory, and then later the "quasi-direct" realist views like intentionalism and adverbialism. Although as we can see, there are still those who commit to direct realism proper.

We can radicalize the inverted spectrum idea. Maybe you see a different palette of colors entirely. Maybe I've never seen any of the colors you've seen. — Pie

Yes, exactly. Maybe this is the case. That's the point I'm making. I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is trying to say. That I am unable to name the colours I see? Firstly, I don't see why not, and secondly, I don't think it's relevant to the discussion. What matters is whether or not the colours I see are mind-independent properties of ordinary objects. The epistemological and ontological issues of perception have nothing to do with English vocabulary.

If somebody insists to me that I can only talk about my memories of my childhood, as opposed to my actual childhood, am I in a position to agree with that person? — sime

No.

This is an interesting take:

Semantic Direct Realism

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.

The SEP article seems to say something similar:

Proponents of intentionalist and adverbialist theories have often thought of themselves as defending a kind of direct realism; Reid (1785), for example, clearly thinks his proto-adverbialist view is a direct realist view. And perceptual experience is surely less indirect on an intentionalist or adverbialist theory than on the typical sense-datum theory, at least in the sense of perceptual directness. Nevertheless, intentionalist and adverbialist theories render the perception of worldly objects indirect in at least two important ways: (a) it is mediated by an inner state, in that one is in perceptual contact with an outer object of perception only (though not entirely) in virtue of being in that inner state; and (b) that inner state is one that we could be in even in cases of radical perceptual error (e.g., dreams, demonic deception, etc.). These theories might thus be viewed as only “quasi-direct” realist theories; experiences still screen off the external world in the sense that whether the agent is in the good case or the bad case, the experience might still be the same. Quasi-direct theories thus reject the Indirectness Principle only under some readings of “directness”.

I think that this "quasi-direct" realism wants to maintain the grammar of saying "we see the table" and avoid the grammar of saying something like "we see sense data" but also wants to avoid the naivety of direct realism proper (e.g. that things independently are as they appear because how they are is directly present in appearance).

The indirect and the quasi-direct realist are then, in a sense, talking past each other. As I mentioned before, the indirect realist says something comparable to "we read words" and the quasi-direct realist says something comparable to "we read about history", both of which can be correct. Whereas the direct realist proper is saying something comparable to "we read history", as if reading about history is direct access to history, which is of course false.

There is no perception without conceptualization in humans ( and higher animals). Conceptualization doesn’t mean using formal. language. To perceive pain or emotion or colors is to construe them by paring expectations with appearance in a complex process of sense making. We dont instantly feel, we undergo a matching and fitting process to determine and identify what it is we are feeling. This is why pain changes it’s felt character in response to many internal and external contextual factors.

This constructive process happens quickly enough that it seems immediate to us. We dont need others to help us judge what we are feeling when we are along , but we need our own cognitive processes to make that judgment, that is , to validate our expectations. — Joshs

I was arguing against Pie's claim that seeing red depends on the public use of the English word "red".

No, dreams and hallucinations are exercising our imagery circuits without succeeding in seeing anything. — bongo fury

If you're going to define "seeing X" as such that it's only satisfied in the case of veridical direct perception then you're begging the question by asserting that we see X.

See and distinguish between red and blue things.

We can do that in cases of dreams, hallucinations, and illusions as well. Therefore it says nothing about the direct realist claim that mind-independent objects are directly present in experience and so independently are as they appear.

The point is they don't need language. So this notion that Wittgenstein's "beetle in a box" argument or how English speakers use the word "red" or anything like this has any relevance to this discussion is mistaken.

I'm trying my best to make sense of "recognise" without implying language use. — bongo fury

A dog can recognise his owner.

Hence my edit: it wouldn't make sense to say they discriminated according to colour, without their associating according to a background classification. — bongo fury

I clearly allowed for there being no language as such: no word- or symbol-pointing. But there will be comparing according to a wider classification, if it makes sense to speak of colour recognition, and not merely discrimination.

And that's how seeing colours is seeing objects. It's recognising classes of objects. (Or illumination events.) — bongo fury

I have no idea what you're talking about. A hermit with no language can recognise when he feels pain. A hermit with no language can recognise when he feels pleasure. A hermit with no language can recognise the difference between feeling pain and feeling pleasure. A hermit with no language can recognise hot from cold, quiet from loud, hard from soft, sweetness from sourness, and so on.

Nothing about this depends on there being some observer who can make, and justify, these claims.

And there's nothing special about colour that makes it any different to the above.

Without that wider association you couldn't say they discriminated (or equated) according to colour. Only that they discriminated. — bongo fury

You confuse me being able to know that that he recognises colours with him being able to recognise colours. He either can or he can't, irrespective of what I think.

It's everything to do with comparing and classifying, whether or not using word-pointing so to do. — bongo fury

I don't need to have words for pleasure and pain to recognise that I am in pain or to recognise the difference between me feeling pleasure and me feeling pain. Qualitative experiences occur and differ from one another, and that they do has nothing to do with being able to make and make sense of my own and another person's vocalisations or ink impressions.

I don't know this but it's true nonetheless. We have evidence that animals can recognise colours and no evidence that they share a common colour vocabulary. I don't see why a human hermit would be any different.

Quaternary glaciation

The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial and interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Ma (million years ago) and is ongoing. Although geologists describe the entire time period up to the present as an "ice age", in popular culture the term "ice age" is usually associated with just the most recent glacial period during the Pleistocene or the Pleistocene epoch in general. Since planet Earth still has ice sheets, geologists consider the Quaternary glaciation to be ongoing, with the Earth now experiencing an interglacial period.

So different people are using the term "ice age" in different ways.

Sorry for the delay. Just saw this. Do you mean something like saying to oneself that such and such is red? I can relate to the experience. I can see it figuring after the fact in an explanation. 'That's when I noticed the light was red, when it was too late to stop.'

I believe I have what I am tempted to call the usual intuitions , but I also see that such a thesis is unsupportable not only in practice but even in principle. The inverted spectrum possibility should make us question the whole framework, it seems to me. (As I see it, it makes a beetle-in-box-point itself.) — Pie

It's nothing to do with language. A hermit with no language could look at two objects and see them to be the same colour (or different colours). That's colour recognition.

How about the private recognition of redness?

Roses are red and grass is green, even if their colors are reversed for one of us. But what can reversed or inverted mean here? — Pie

That the colour you see roses to be is the colour I see grass to be and vice versa.

But clearly all that matters is the convention that roses are red (like calibrating a scale.) — Pie

I think it more accurate to say that red is the colour that roses are seen to be. This then accommodates both the "convention" that roses are red and Locke's inverted spectrum hypothesis. There is the common public use of the word "red" and the private understanding of redness.

I think the wrinkle is in red is a property as we see it. It's as if 'red' is supposed to do double-duty for some ineffable private experience which is somehow known to be the same ineffable private experience for all (an impossible public-yet-private experience). — Pie

I don't think it needs to be the same. It could be that your red isn't my red in something comparable to Locke's inverted spectrum hypothesis.

But also it could be that it is the same. Assuming that we have the same kind of eyes and same kind of brain, and assuming that the relationship between body and mind (whatever that is) is deterministic, then we should have the same kinds of private experiences.

Ryle attacks this kind of confusion in The Concept of Mind, just as Wittgenstein does with his beetles and boxes. — Pie

I don't buy Wittgenstein's account. If at some point I were shown the contents of your box but not recognise it as being a beetle then clearly I mean something private by "beetle". The word "beetle" and the phrase "the contents of our boxes" would mean different things to me.

Or again, consider Locke's inverted spectrum hypothesis where one morning my private colour experiences change. If such a thing happened I wouldn't then continue to say that grass is green and that rubies are red. I would say that grass is red (or "looks red" if you prefer) and that rubies are green (or "look green"). It's a perfectly coherent scenario (not withstanding its physical possibility) and so clearly there's more to the meaning of colour words than just some public activity.

But as I said before, what we mean by "red" is irrelevant to the discussion really. It's not a discussion about what words mean.

But i think those considerations are tangential, for direct realists take the object of perception to be the stimulus that directly elicits a behavioural response from an agent, however the boundary of the agent is defined. Would Dennett disagree with direct realists who define perception in this way? — sime

The problem with this account is that it doesn't seem to say anything about experience at all. Does a Venus flytrap experience the fly when that fly directly elicits a behavioural response from it?

You’re asking me to give an internally (and scientifically?) consistent account of direct realism. I can’t do that because it isn’t consistent, hence why I’m not a direct realist. They are the ones claiming that in the case of veridical perception an external object is directly present in experience (and so not “hidden”) and so that the object (independently) is as it appears.

The very questions you’re directing at me, issues with hallucinations and illusions and perspectives and differences in colour perception and the sensibility of objects independently being as they appear, etc. are the very criticisms that indirect realists levy against direct realism, and which I feel direct realists fail to overcome. At best their position is false, at worst it’s incoherent.

But not their position? Is where they are not an appearance, but hair colour is? What about if one twin was facing one way and the other twin another? — Isaac

Ask direct realists, not me.

See also Colour Resemblance and Colour Realism

The account of colours to be discussed in this essay endorses naive realism about colours. The realist aspect of this endorsement is that the view under consideration assigns colours the status of features that are actually instantiated independently of our particular experiences of them and therefore are open to genuine recognition. And the naive aspect consists in its acceptance that colours possess also the qualitative (as well as any additional) features which they are presented as having. Both aspects together ensure that colours really are as they are subjectively given to us – and thus that the first ambition is satisfied.

...

The view at issue combines this naive realist stance with a reductionist approach to colours which identifies them with third-personally accessible – and typically, though not necessarily, physical – properties. This means, among other things, that the subjective presentation of colours in fact amounts to a presentation – or representation, if one prefers – of the properties identified with colours. For instance, it is these properties which are given to us as being similar or different in certain respects, or as instantiated independently of our perception of them.

...

It suffices to note that they all accept that colours are properties, which are really as they are subjectively given to us...

...

This idea presupposes that there is a robust correlation between the presentational first-personal aspects of colour experiences, on the one hand, and the relevant third-personal aspects of whichever properties are identified with colours and taken to be represented by those experiences, on the other. That is, how colours are subjectively presented as being should be correlated to how they are from the third-personal perspective.

And more.

Then how are we ever wrong? The direct realists you've cited for me all say we can be wrong.

But all the direct realists you've cited include the possibility of us being wrong, so all those situations just count as situations in which we were wrong. — Isaac

That's for them to explain, not me. That we can be wrong shows that something other than an external object being directly present in experience must be happening. Their attempts to solve the problems of hallucination and illusion seem like special pleading to me. See the disjunctive theory of perception where they argue against the Common Kind Claim and say that only in veridical perception is an external object being directly present in experience.

So for them, a veridical perception isn't one where we "correctly infer" the nature of a hidden state, or whatever it is you're saying. For them, a veridical perception is one where the state isn't hidden.

That doesn't answer the question about what properties we're supposed to be matching. The twin on the right has a different spatio-temporal position to the one on the left. So they don't resemble each other after all? — Isaac

Their appearances resemble. Their shape, the colour of their hair, etc.

The process of 'seeing' is one of inferring what hidden states are. — Isaac

Except it's not about inference. They claim that the external cause is directly presented in experience, and so it isn't hidden. Direct realism is nothing like Friston's theory.

Again, if you want anything more direct than 'inference' then you eliminate the possibility of being wrong — Isaac

And that's why the arguments from illusion and hallucination are evidence against direct realism, as is the fact that different people see different colours.

Right. But to tell the twins resemble each other I look at their properties they both have red hair, the both have high cheek bones, etc). What are we looking for in the "apple-as-experienced" and the "unexperienced-apple" to tell if they're similar? — Isaac

The twin on the right resembles the twin on the left even if you never meet him.

If a 'red apple' is a hidden state in a particular configuration — Isaac

And that's where you're getting confused. Direct realists don't claim that a red apple is a hidden state. Direct realists claim that a red apple is a directly visible thing. Direct realists have a fundamentally different view of perception than your free energy principle/active inference interpretation.

That far I understand. Where I'm coming unstuck is on what anyone means by the world "resembling" how it appears. — Isaac

Imagine a set of identical twins. The twin on the left resembles the twin on the right. Now imagine that the twin on the left is an apple-as-experienced and the twin on the right is an unexperienced-apple.

@Isaac

And on the topic of color dispositionalism, as it appears at first glance to be your view (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but from that article on it:

For our current purposes, there are two crucial components to this package. The first is the idea that we should distinguish between two notions of color: color as a property of physical bodies, and color as it is in sensation (or, as it is sometimes described, “color-as-we-experience-it”).

This was the point I tried to make several times regarding the two different meanings of "red".

This is needed to avoid the circularity problem:

The circularity problem reflects the way the dispositionalist thesis is usually formulated:

X is red = X has the disposition to look red to normal perceivers, in standard conditions.

If we understand the phrase “to look red”, on the right hand side, to mean “to look to be red”, then it would seem we have troubles. As Levin puts it:

If an object is red iff it’s disposed to look red (under appropriate conditions), then an object must be disposed to look red iff it’s disposed to look to be disposed to look red … and so on, ad infinitum. (Levin 2000: 163)

Indeed, but you're using the vagueries of colour sensation (which Locke already decided was a secondary quality) to show that objects do not resemble appearances. Locke already covered that by using secondary qualities. His claim about primary qualities was things like solidity, extension, shape, and mobility. So, using Locke, it seems insufficient to show the direct realist os wrong using differences in colour perception as they (Locke being an example) already differentiate two types of property and colour is not primary. What am I missing here? — Isaac

I am simply pointing out that people believe(d) that the world resembles how it appears to us. Locke, an indirect realist, argued that it doesn't resemble appearances in the cases of what he considered the secondary qualities. Direct realists didn't make this distinction.

So it appears even the critics are agreed that the colour primitivists are still assuming colour is a property which we detect and produces the way it appears, not that colour actually is 'the experience of red' in an object.

I'm not finding, in the sources you've provided, the idea that any direct realist considers objects to actually have (rather than have a property which causes) the 'experience of red'. Do you have any less ambiguous sources, or perhaps you could explain them more clearly? — Isaac

As the quote I provided says, they claim that colours "are not micro-structural properties or reflectances, or anything of the sort." And I'll add, color realist primitivism isn't color dispositionalism, which is the position that colours "are dispositional properties: powers to appear in distinctive ways to perceivers (of the right kind), in the right kind of circumstances; i.e., to cause experiences of an appropriate kind in those circumstances" (which seems to be your view).

I'm not saying that their claim is that objects have "the experience of red". I'm saying that their claim is that objects have a red appearance. They're saying that an object's colour resembles how it appears to us (in the same way that Locke would say this about his primary qualities).

From your quoting of the article, "at most, one group is correct, but we would not know which." What they mean here is that the object's colour is revealed in the experience of one group, not just that it causes the "appropriate" experience (as per colour dispositionalism) in one group.

Physicists seem to manage. — Marchesk

They just make the same assumptions as the rest of us; that the world will continue to behave as it has always done. See time-variation of fundamental constants.

It is one meaning of causation. It is not the classical meaning. It is a Humean formulation. — Marchesk

Under a Humean understanding of causation. Not the traditional one. — Marchesk

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that Humean causation isn't the counterfactual theory of causation?

it provides no explanation for why B follows A

It's not supposed to. The counterfactual theory of causation just explains what it means for A to cause B. We need something else to explain why A causes B.

I disagree with Humean causation becues it leads to the problem of induction

And perhaps there is a(n unsolvable) problem of induction. How can empirical facts allow for deductive inference? They're not a formal system with axiomatic principles.

It makes everything in the universe contingent. — Marchesk

You seem to be conflating epistemology with ontology. That we can't know that the universe will always behave a certain way isn't that it won't.

The counterfactual theory doesn't say whether B is necessitated by A, which the traditional notion of A forcing B to happen entails. — Marchesk

And what does it mean to say that A forces B to happen if not just that if A didn't happen then B wouldn't have happened?

Your account is just replacing the word "cause", first with "makes happen" and now with "forces". These are just synonyms that don't offer any actual explanation. The underlying meaning behind each of these phrases is what the counterfactual theory of causation is trying to make sense of.

Therefore, we can't know that B will follow A in the future under the counterfactual. — Marchesk

The counterfactual theory of causation is about token events, not types. There is only ever one A and one B.

If you want to talk about A and B as being types then you're right, we can't know that A-type events will always cause B-type events, and that's because sometimes they don't. Sometimes when I kick a ball at a window it will cause the window to break and sometimes it won't.

But knowing whether or not A will cause B has no bearing on what it means for A to cause B. The counterfactual theory of causation is an account of the meaning of causation. Whether or not A will cause B, and whether or not we can know this, is a separate matter.