Jimmy Alfonso Licon

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

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, I was intrigued by philosophical questions—like the nature of infinity and moral disagreement—since childhood. A spontaneous decision to enroll in an introductory philosophy class as an undergraduate immediately clarified my life's direction as clear as day: I wanted to be a professional philosopher. I currently live with my wife, a prosecutor, and family near the Superstition Mountains in Apache Junction, where we embrace life in the desert. For fun I enjoy watching older movies (Westerns, comedies), stand up comedy, making dad jokes, cooking, and caring for our desert home.

I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland. My dissertation, Some Epistemological and Practical Challenges to Moral Realism: Evolutionary Debunking, Overgeneralization, and Afterward, was supervised by Peter Carruthers, with committee members Dan Moller, Christopher W. Morris, Brian Kogelmann, and Tomas Bogardus (Pepperdine University). I hold a Master's in philosophy from San Francisco State University and a Bachelor's in philosophy from the University of California, Davis.

My research focuses broadly on ethics, epistemology, political economy, the law, and God. I also have minor interests in business ethics and metaphysics (esp. the philosophy of time). My published work appears in journals including Philosophical Psychology, Episteme, The Independent Review, and the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy and popular outlets like Think, Philosophy Now, Free Inquiry, The Montreal Review, Presser Magazine, and many others. 

I have a book under contract with Peter Lang Publishers titled Better Not to Know: Why Knowing Less is Sometimes Best exploring the surprising benefits of marginal ignorance drawing on conceptual tools from philosophy, economics, and moral psychology, like marginal marginal thinking, incentives, and signaling theory to better understand problems in applied epistemology. So far, the research for the (forthcoming) book has resulted in several papers:

1. 'Without Thinking Twice: (Some Forms of) Ignorance as Moral Signaling' (Journal of Culture and Cognition, forthcoming) argues that ignorance of the costs and benefits of actions, like aiding someone in distress without thinking twice, is a reliable moral signal of altruism and trustworthiness—such actions, performed while ignorant, risk incurring costs with little or no benefit. Why care? First, this paper contributes to the literature applying signaling theory to moral issues. Second, it highlights some moral benefits of ignorance. And finally, it stresses how reliable self-signals increase the likelihood that those who are benevolent, in the present, will act comparably in the future—moral identity motivates future moral action, and reliable signals shape that identity. 

2. 'You Oughta Know: On the Possibility of Culpable Knowledge' (Episteme, forthcoming) argues that people who rightly believe that gaining specific knowledge would be enough to motivate moral action but remain strategically ignorant due to selfinterest. This paper argues that such individuals have a moral obligation to acquire the salient knowledge given the following applies: first, such individuals are aware of the morally efficacious knowledge; and second, the efficacious knowledge is accessible to them. Then, we examine similarities and differences between morally mandatory knowledge and culpable ignorance. Finally, morally mandatory knowledge shows that ignorance can result from deficient moral character.

3. 'Better not to know: on the possibility of culpable ignorance' (Social Epistemology, 2025) argues that for certain individuals with psychological ticks, it is better for them to know less about the politics of others since, knowing about someone's politics will make them a worse epistemic agent overall due to the combination of their psychological tick and the triggering knowledge. So, at least in some cases, it is better if some people are ignorant of certain facts that, had they known them, would make them worse epistemic agents.

4. 'The invisible hand of political irrationality' (Ethics, Politics, and Society, 2024) argues that virtue signaling and rationalizations in politics have a largely ignored upside: because people hate hypocrisy, and punish hypocrites by discounting their reputations, politicians and other political actors who virtue signal and rationalize to get ahead face charges of hypocrisy if they too often or too obviously change their views, especially when done in an unprincipled and self-interested manner. And, like the invisible hand of the market, pressure to be consistent and the motive to virtue signal and rationalize are a recipe for producing, in some cases, better behavior in the political domains, despite the many downside of such practices.

5. 'Transparency and morally and politically corrupting' (Asian Journal of Philosophy, 2024) argues using tools from economics and moral psychology that transparency incentivizes people--due to their interest in their reputation and social status--to generate fake, but plausible-sounding reasons to justify their actions to others, and to refuse to compromise, thus forcing people to either maintain two separate identities, or to become the fake personal internally that they project publicly.

6. 'Some moral benefits of ignorance' (Philosophical Psychology, 2023) argues that because people are social, coalitional creatures who must rely on each other to survive, we are partly motivated to look good to others. And doing good deeds, while remaining ignorant of the personal benefits and costs of acting good, can boost one's reputation for benevolence and trustworthiness, under the right conditions. And so, given those conditions, there is a strong incentive to do good while remaining ignorant of the personal costs and benefits of doing that good. There are, in other words, indirect moral benefits to (some kinds of) ignorance.

7. 'The epistemology of moral praise and moral criticism' (Episteme, 2023) argues that using incentives (personal costs and benefits), we can argue that in WEIRD societies—Western, Educated, Individualized, Rich, and Democratic—moral criticism tends to be costlier, and so is more likely to be sincere, than moral praise. So, there is some reason, to take moral criticism as more sincere than moral praise, all else being equal.

Beyond academic philosophy, I'm actively engaged in public philosophy through my writing on Substack and YouTube channel, Uncommon Wisdom, where I translate complex philosophical ideas into accessible conversations for broader audiences on topics like doggy ethics, the moral unseen, why democracy is bullshit and transparency is corrupting, how signaling theory illuminates, whether Christmas gifts are wasteful, and more! My interests outside academia include film (especially classics from the 1980s and 1990s), stand-up comedy, mixed martial arts and other combat sports (mostly as a fan), and engaging in fun philosophical discussions with random (friendly) strangers at Starbucks like Socrates in the agora with baristas.

My complete C.V. is here. My personal email is jimmylicon01 [at]gmail.com. You can find links to my other work below.