Editing Counterfactual conditional (section)

====The problem of counterfactuals====

According to the [[material conditional]] analysis, a natural language conditional, a statement of the form "if P then Q", is true whenever its antecedent, P, is false. Since counterfactual conditionals are those whose antecedents are false, this analysis would wrongly predict that all counterfactuals are vacuously true. Goodman illustrates this point using the following pair in a context where it is understood that the piece of butter under discussion had not been heated.<ref name="jstor.org">Goodman, N., "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2019988 The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals]", ''The Journal of Philosophy'', Vol. 44, No. 5, (27 February 1947), pp. 113–28.</ref> 
# If that piece of butter had been heated to 150°, it would have melted.
# If that piece of butter had been heated to 150°, it would not have melted.

More generally, such examples show that counterfactuals are not truth-functional. In other words, knowing whether the antecedent and consequent are actually true is not sufficient to determine whether the counterfactual itself is true.<ref name="Counterfactuals"/>