 Now, the explanation of the heat capacity embeds its explanandum into patterns of functional dependencies and allows us to answer how the heat capacity would change if the available phase space were different. That is, the explanation does enable us to answer what Woodward calls what-if-things-had-been-different questions (Woodward 1979), which, according to Woodward’s account of explanation is an important feature of causal explanations. Yet the counterfactuals at issue cannot be interpreted in terms of interventions or manipulations on the electron states. Indeed, the fact that the value of the heat capacity of metals follows from structural features of the electrons’ phase space and is not something that, even in principle, is open to manipulation or control arguably is itself explanatorily relevant. Thus, one might worry that by classifying explanations such as this as causal the causal imperialist obliterates what is an important distinction between different explanatory functions and epistemic goals.