ketab-ol-ein, which was written by ahmad farahidi, is one of the oldest dictionaries that exist today. in the preliminary discussion we mentioned that, although historical sources show that the work of ibn abbas looks like a dictionary, it is becoming accepted that ketab-ol-ein is the first dictionary. the article starts with explanations about the life and work of khalilibn ahmad. we have also...

∗Supported in part by NSF under grants IRI-96-25901 and 0090145. †Supported in part by grants from NSF, ONR, AFOSR, and MICRO. We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion paper. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for cer...

Consider an infinite series whose items are each explained by their immediate successor. Does such explanation explain the whole or does it leave something to be explained? Hume arguably claimed that fully series. Leibniz, however, designed a very telling objection against this claim, involving of book copies. In paper, I argue Humean claim can, in certain cases, saved from Leibnizian “infinite...

If ontic dependence is the basis of explanation, there cannot be mathematical explanations. Accounting for explanatory dependency between properties and empirical phenomena poses insurmountable metaphysical epistemic difficulties, proposed amendments to counterfactual theory explanation invariably violate core commitments theory. Instead, explanations are either abstract mechanistic constitutiv...