Jimmy Licon

Jimmy Alfonso Licon is from Sacramento, California. He attended undergraduate school in Davis, California, and graduate school in San Francisco and near Washington D.C.

Before ASU, Jimmy was an Emergent Ventures Fellow (post-doc) at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He taught at Georgetown, University of Maryland, and Towson University. 

He works on ethical and epistemic issues involving signaling, aspirations, and ignorance. He is writing a book drawing on philosophy, economics, and moral psychology to explore how ignorance facilitates many aspects of life from the personal to the moral and political entitled Better Not to Know: Why Knowing Less Is Sometimes Best. He is also writing a paper exploring cases of morally mandatory knowledge, and another exploring how hard-to-fake signals can overcome pluralistic ignorance (and it's negative aspects).

He dabbles in philosophy of religion and philosophy of law. He is interested in whether there are good reason to adopt theism, and the attitudes we should take toward religious practice, e.g., whether a genuine religious practitioner merely hope God exists. And whether the robust epistemic standing of (some) exceptions to the hearsay rule can be captured as hard-to-fake signals.

His blogcast (blog/podcast) is Uncommon Wisdom, a source for philosophy and uncommon wisdom.

In his spare time, he likes country music and classic rock, stand up comedy, and the combat sports. He also abides.