When We Say 'Ground' Do We Mean 'Cause'?

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Scientists, in their attempts to characterise the physical world, theorise relations between precipitating events (e.g. taking aspirin) and subsequent events (e.g. alleviating headaches). The worry is that fundamental facts about these relations are unobtainable because explanation cannot be 'grounded' -viz we cannot discern a hierarchal structure of reality, whereby 'lower' explanations ground 'higher' explanations. In my research I plan to adopt this hue of scepticism, hypothesising that we, as thinking agents, may never fundamentally demystify scientific explanations. Specifically, my thesis is that there is no epistemically viable notion of grounding to 'bottom-out' explanation in mind-independent, non-causal facts. However, I will leave the door open for epistemic theories, according to which causality is a feature of how we represent reality, where scientific explanation can be adequately grounded in our beliefs. I will deploy the skills and experience I have gained from academic physics and philosophy and a career in medicine to assess what this thesis means for medical practice. Pertinently to my previous profession, I will assess how my findings limit the optimisation of person-centred approaches in healthcare, which postulate that each patient has a unique combination of symptoms whose causal relations can be explained.