 A few final philosophical remarks are in order about the kinds of analyses discussed here. If one follows Woodward (2002) and Hitchcock (2001) in their interpretation of these networks, a structural equation should be viewed as a primitive counterfactual. It follows that this is a non-reductive analysis of counterfactual dependence: it only explains how the truth of arbitrarily complex counterfactual sentences are grounded in basic relations of counterfactual dependence. However, note in the earlier quotation above from Pearl (2009: 239–240) that he interprets structural equations as basic mechanisms or laws, and so arguably counts as an analysis of counterfactuals in terms of laws. These amount to two very different philosophical positions that interact with the philosophical debates  surveyed in  §1.3.