The English word is "counterfactual". It is both a noun and an adjective, so we can talk about counterfactuals, and make counterfactual arguments. Historians use them quite a bit, but they need to be limited. For example, we can say that if Lincoln had not been assassinated, Reconstruction would have been better implemented- because his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner who did not want to have it. But we can't say that Reconstruction under Lincoln would have been successful, because we know that the south would have opposed it regardless of whether Lincoln or Johnson was in charge. Of course, you run into many wild uses of counterfactuals that try to make such big leaps: like, if the Aztecs and Incas had had ships, they could have successfully fought off the Spanish conquistadors.

But we also use counterfactuals when we don't have direct sources. We don't have really clear evidence of exactly what advanced in wire-making in the late 13th c., but right around 1300 a lot of musical instruments appeared which used lots of strong metal wire- the chekker, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the dulcimer. So, we can say that likely wire-making did get better then, because otherwise we would have seen those instruments appear earlier.

Counterfactuals are embedded in the language. Many languages ( at least German, Dutch and French) have a conditional verb form for them: like "if I had known you were going to be there at 4:00, I would have been able to meet you". So, they are very much a topic in philosophy. Here's an English article on them. But, you might find it easier to translate "counterfactual" into your own language.