Jimmy Alfonso Licon

I'm an Assistant Teaching Professor in Philosophy at Arizona State University. Before that, I was an Emergent Ventures Fellow (post-doc) at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and I taught philosophy at  Georgetown, Towson University, and University of Maryland.

My work focuses on ethical and epistemic issues involving cooperation, signaling, and ignorance, and issues in the philosophy of religion. I also dabble in metaphysics, and philosophy of law. My work has appeared, among other places, in Philosophical Psychology, Episteme, and Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. And I have a book under contract at Peter Lang Publishers called Better Not to Know: Why Knowing Less is Sometimes Best that examines the value of ignorance in many facets of life using philosophy, economics and moral psychology.

I did my doctorate at University of Maryland. My dissertation is 'Some Epistemological and Practical Challenges to Moral Realism: Evolutionary Debunking, Overgeneralization, and Afterward.' My dissertation chair was Peter Carruthers, with committee members Dan Moller, Christopher Morris, Brian Kogelmann, and Tomas Bogardus (outside member--Pepperdine University). I have a master's degree (philosophy) from San Francisco State University, and a bachelor's (philosophy) from the University of California, Davis. 

I was born and raised in Sacramento (CA), and drawn to philosophical ideas even as a child (e.g. the nature of infinity, moral disagreement). My freshman year of college, I took an introductory philosophy course on a whim. From there, I wanted to be a philosopher. I enjoy music, stand-up comedy, and movies.

My complete C.V. is here. My personal email is jimmylicon01 [at]gmail.com. My work is below: