The Monfort Workshop, Idealization and Values in Policymaking, will be held on April 16 & 17, 2026 in the Longs Peak Room in the Lory Student Center (rm 302) on the CSU campus.
Scientific models play a crucial role in many policymaking decisions. Underlying the use of these models for policymaking purposes is the extensive use of idealization and values. This interdisciplinary workshop seeks to investigate the roles that idealization, values, and models play in scientific policymaking and how their contributions are assessed and managed. The workshop will bring together philosophers and scientists working at the intersections of these areas in the hopes of bridging gaps between the scientific modeling literature, literatures surrounding the role of values in science, and discussions of science-based policy construction.
This event is sponsored by the Monfort Family Foundation and organized by Dr. Collin Rice, Associate Professor of Philosophy and current Monfort Professor.
Schedule for Day 1: Thursday, April 16
9:00-9:15: Workshop Welcome, Dr. Collin Rice
9:15-10:15: Yasha Rohwer (Oregon Tech), “Insidious Naturalness: The cost of bundling naturalness with biodiversity”
10:20-11:20: Gabriele Contessa (Carleton), “Can We Trust Science Too Much? Models, Values, and Pandemic School Closures”
12:30-1:30: Mark Risjord (Emory), “Aims, Underdetermination, and Surrogative Inference: The Strange Case of The Mankind Quarterly”
1:35-2:35: Keynote: Jay Odenbaugh (Lewis and Clark), “Modeling Mass Extinction: Idealization, Uncertainty, and Policy”
Keynote Abstract: One influential argument that we are headed toward a mass extinction relies on species–area models from community ecology, which project large biodiversity losses from habitat destruction. Yet these models depend on obvious idealizations and face persistent empirical challenges, raising doubts about their reliability for policy-making. I argue that these worries are overstated. While species–area models abstract and distort extinction, a pragmatic account of modeling shows how they can still provide warranted, policy-relevant guidance. Their evidential role depends less on strict accuracy than on whether they are “true enough” for the purposes at hand.
Schedule for Day 2: Friday, April 17
9:30-10:30: Stephanie Hoffmann (Kansas State), “Ethical Implications of Modeling Wilderness Areas”
10:35-11:35: Adam C. Smith (Utah), “Wildfire Management Policymaking & Tribal Involvement: Going Beyond Co-Management”
1:00-2:00: Ben Hale (University of Colorado, Boulder) & Ken Shockley (CSU), “Risk, Reason, and Wicked Problems”
2:05-3:05: Patricia Marino (Waterloo), “Idealized Models, Counterfactual Reasoning, and Inductive Risk in Social Science Contexts”
3:10-4:10: Keynote: Wendy Parker (Virginia Tech), “How to make policy-relevant modeling responsive to values”
Keynote Abstract: The epistemic projection approach (EPA) is a methodology for making scientific research responsive to non-epistemic values, when such influence is appropriate. In this talk, I identify some situations in which value influence is appropriate in policy-relevant scientific research, and I show how EPA could be applied when the research being undertaken involves modeling. Along the way, I suggest that choosing among idealizations in model construction and selection is a central way in which values can play a role in policy-relevant modeling, alongside choices of concept operationalization.
