Relationships of counterfactual dependence have played a major role in recent debates of explanation and understanding in the philosophy of science. Usually, counterfactual dependencies have been viewed as the explanantia of explanation, i.e., the things providing explanation and understanding. Sometimes, however, counterfactual dependencies are themselves the targets of explanations in science. These kinds of explanations are the focus of this paper. I argue that “micro-level model explanations” explain the particular form of the empirical regularity underlying a counterfactual dependency by representing it as a physical necessity on the basis of postulated microscopic entities. By doing so, micro-level models rule out possible forms the regularity (and the associated counterfactual) could have taken. Micro-model explanations, in other words, constrain empirical regularities and their associated counterfactual dependencies. I introduce and illustrate micro-level model explanations in detail, contrast them to other accounts of explanation, and consider potential problems.

反事实依赖关系在最近关于科学哲学中解释和理解的辩论中发挥了重要作用。通常，反事实依赖被视为解释的解释，即提供解释和理解的事物。然而，有时，反事实依赖本身就是科学解释的目标。这些解释是本文的重点。我认为，“微观模型解释”通过在假设的微观实体的基础上将其表示为物理必要性来解释反事实依赖关系背后的经验规律的特殊形式。通过这样做，微观层面的模型排除了规律性（以及相关的反事实）可能的可能形式已经采取。换句话说，微观模型解释限制了经验规律及其相关的反事实依赖性。我详细介绍和说明了微观层次的模型解释，将它们与其他解释进行对比，并考虑潜在的问题。