 One reply to this threat of modal realism is that contrary to the initial impression provided by the counterfactual characterization of observability, observability is not a modal property, after all (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 411). As explained in section 2.5 above, van Fraassen takes the truth of counterfactuals to be context-dependent. Once a context is fixed, counterfactuals can be expressed as non-modal conditionals. In the case of the counterfactuals that explicate observability, then, fixing the epistemic community of the “suitably constituted observer” transforms the counterfactuals into straightforward non-modal conditionals whose truth or lack thereof we can empirically investigate (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 413–414). Belief in the truth of some claim of the form ’x is observable’ amounts simply to belief in the truth of such a context-fixed, non-modal conditional.