Student Spotlight: Matt Grisko
Contact: Andy McGlashen, News Writer for Environmental Science and Policy Program: (517) 432-3823 or mcglash3@msu.edu
Every environmental issue has philosophical underpinnings, and understanding them can lead to better decisions. “The world would be a better place if we all sat and thought things through,” says Matt Grisko, who began at MSU this year as a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy and ESPP.
Grisko studies environmental philosophy, with a focus on environmental ethics. In particular, he studies how non-human entities such as ecosystems are valued, and how that affects their treatment. A central theme in his field is the idea that policy attempts to enact existing societal goals and values,“but the question isn't just what our goals and values are, but rather what they should be,” he says. This is a fundamentally philosophical question. “Despite what is sometimes said, we cannot answer such questions by merely looking at the world.”
Grisko advocates more engagement between philosophers and other fields of human life and activity. That’s why he likes ESPP, he says. “Everyone seems so interconnected, and that’s really important.” Philosophy is good at clarifying poorly understood assumptions and important concepts, he says. For example, discussions of wilderness protection often exclude humans from the concept of wilderness. Building policy on this concept can result in indigenous groups being forcibly removed from 'wilderness' preserves, because the accepted concept of wilderness requires no permanent human habitation in the area.
Grisko is originally from Des Plaines, IL and has a masters degree in philosophy from the University of Idaho, where he studied ecosystem restoration. There, he studied questions like what people mean when they say that they want to ‘restore’ an ecosystem. Do they seek to restore it to its state at a specific date or to a certain level of ecosystem services? Grisko first became interested in environmental philosophy in his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin.
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