Sentences of the form `It would have been the case that ...' make no sense if they are presented without a context. They typically occur after a clause of the form `If it had been the case that ...', and so far, most semantic investigations have been restricted to their occurrence in that particular context.
However, counterfactual conditionals are not the only place where one finds the counterfactual mood. One of the questions I am pursuing is in exactly which contexts these sentences can occur. And secondly I would like to know what they mean in these contexts. The answers to both rely on what it means to make a counterfactual assumption. I will argue that the standard view based on the notion of minimal holistic change (Ramsey, Lewis, Stalnaker) should be replaced by a notion of minimal base change.