0 thinking about what did not happen but could have happened, or relating to this kind of thinking:
Thoughts about how an embarrassing event might have turned out differently are known to psychologists as counterfactual thinking.
1 something such as piece of writing or an argument that considers what would have been the result if events had happened in a different way to how they actually happened:
They compare actual income distributions in 2018 to a counterfactual that assumes incomes had continued to keep pace with growth in per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
We can solve this missing data problem by constructing counterfactuals: how much a college graduate would earn if she had chosen to be a high school graduate.
You can't prove a counterfactual such as the claim that if there had been video, that officer never would have been charged.
A counterfactual is a mental simulation where you think about something that happened, and then imagine an alternate ending.
In political science, the task is more difficult, and requires either comparative analysis or the careful use of counterfactual scenarios.
Counterfactual simulations are also presented to highlight what might happen if things take a different turn.
This is so because strong indifference is now ascertained by means of a counterfactual situation.
Even in the absence of empirical evidence a counterfactual argument always presumes a pattern of covariational evidence.
