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

科学家在试图描述物理世界的过程中，将突发事件（如服用阿司匹林）与随后事件（如缓解头痛）之间的关系理论化。令人担忧的是，关于这些关系的基本事实是无法获得的，因为解释无法“扎根”——也就是说，我们无法辨别现实的等级结构，由此，“较低”的解释为“较高”的解释提供了基础。在我的研究中，我计划采用这种怀疑主义的色调，假设我们作为思考的主体，可能永远不会从根本上揭开科学解释的神秘面纱。具体来说，我的论点是，在独立于思维的、非因果的事实中，没有基于“自下而上”解释的认识论上可行的概念。然而，我将为认识论敞开大门，根据认识论，因果关系是我们如何表征现实的一个特征，科学解释可以充分基于我们的信念。我将运用我从学术物理和哲学以及医学事业中获得的技能和经验来评估这篇论文对医学实践的意义。与我之前的职业相关，我将评估我的发现如何限制以人为本的医疗保健方法的优化，这种方法假设每个患者都有独特的症状组合，其因果关系可以解释。

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.