31 found
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  1. Some moral benefits of ignorance.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (2):319-336.
    When moral philosophers study ignorance, their efforts are almost exclusively confined to its exculpatory and blameworthy aspects. Unfortunately, though, this trend overlooks that certain kinds of propositional ignorance, namely of the personal costs and benefits of altruistic actions, can indirectly incentivize those actions. Humans require cooperation from others to survive, and that can be facilitated by a good reputation. One avenue to a good reputation is helping others, sticking to moral principles, and so forth, without calculating the personal costs of (...)
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  2. Sceptical Thoughts on Philosophical Expertise.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2012 - Logos and Episteme 3 (3):449-458.
    My topic is two-fold: a reductive account of expertise as an epistemic phenomenon, and applying the reductive account to the question of whether or not philosophers enjoy expertise. I conclude, on the basis of the reductive account, that even though philosophers enjoy something akin to second-order expertise (i.e. they are often experts on the positions of other philosophers, current trends in the philosophical literature, the history of philosophy, conceptual analysis and so on), they nevertheless lack first-order philosophical expertise (i.e. expertise (...)
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  3. The Epistemology of Moral Praise and Moral Criticism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2021 - Episteme 20 (2):337-348.
    Are strangers sincere in their moral praise and criticism? Here we apply signaling theory to argue ceteris paribus moral criticism is more likely sincere than praise; the former tends to be a higher-fidelity signal (in Western societies). To offer an example: emotions are often self-validating as a signal because they're hard to fake. This epistemic insight matters: moral praise and criticism influence moral reputations, and affect whether others will cooperate with us. Though much of this applies to generic praise and (...)
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  4. Better Spent Elsewhere Why Philosophy Should Be Funded Less.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2024 - The Independent Review 29 (1):71-87.
    If you’ve got millions of dollars to donate, don’t donate them to academic philosophy. Producing philosophical articles and books faces diminishing returns and diverts money and attention from more important causes. Many philosophy books and articles contradict each other; at best, only some can be correct. Philosophy classes are poor at instilling critical thinking skills. Resources that would be spent on philosophy would be better spent elsewhere.
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  5.  72
    Aspirational theism and gratuitous suffering.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2021 - Religious Studies 57 (2):287-300.
    Philosophers have long wondered whether God exists; and yet, they have ignored the question of whether we should hope that He exists – call this stance aspirational theism. In this article, I argue that we have a weighty pro tanto reason to adopt this stance: theism offers a metaphysical guarantee against gratuitous suffering. On the other hand, few atheist alternatives offer such a guarantee – and even then, there are reasons to worry that they are inferior to the theistic alternative. (...)
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  6. The Immorality of Procreation.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2012 - Think 11 (32):85-91.
    In this paper, I argue the practice of procreation is immoral regardless of the consequences of human presence such as climate change and overpopulation; the lack of consent, interests and moral desert on the part of nonexistent individuals means someone could potentially suffer in the absence of moral justification. Procreation is only morally justified if there is some method for acquiring informed consent from a non-existent person; but that is impossible; therefore, procreation is immoral.
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  7. That seems wrong: pedagogically defusing moral relativism and moral skepticism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2023 - International Journal of Ethics Education 8 (2):335-349.
    Students sometimes profess moral relativism or skepticism with retorts like ‘how can we know?’ or ‘it’s all relative!’ Here I defend a pedagogical method to defuse moral relativism and moral skepticism using phenomenal conservatism: if it seems to S that p, S has defeasible justification to believe that p; e.g., moral seemings, like perceptual ones, are defeasibly justified. The purpose of defusing moral skepticism and relativism is to prevent these metaethical views from acting as stumbling blocks to insightful ethical inquiry (...)
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  8.  46
    Transparency as morally and politically corrupting.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2024 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):1-16.
    It is widely held that transparency incentivizes good behavior. Though that may be, sometimes, there are tradeoffs here: transparency incentivizes people to conceal genuine reasons for action and instead manufacture insincere reasons for public consumption. The evidence for this comes from moral psychology and economics: when people are observed, they acquire an incentive to make more deontological and intuitive moral judgments than they would otherwise. In contrast, transparency incentivizes politicians and leaders to make more consequentialist and calculated moral judgments than (...)
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  9.  43
    Properly Functioning Brains and Personal Identity: An Argument for Neural Animalism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - SATS 14 (1):63-69.
  10. Another Argument for Animalism: The Argument from Causal Powers.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2012 - Prolegomena 11 (2):169-180.
    The causal powers that I have, such as the ability to go to the store for cold beer, for instance are the same causal powers as those had by the human animal closely associated with me. That is, the biological organism that invariably stares back at me, whenever I look in the mirror. Thus, if I want to avoid gratuitous causal overdetermination – i.e. if I want to avoid positing two separate individuals with identical, and thus redundant, causal powers – (...)
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  11.  20
    Democracy Incentivizes Bullshit.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2024 - Social Philosophy Today 40:113-126.
    Democracies face an epistemic crisis: incentivizing bullshit. Here “bullshit”—coined by philosopher Harry Frankfurt—means convincing truth-insensitive statements or claims. This paper focuses on several democratic factors that incentivize bullshit: deliberative transparency, epistemic spillover effects, and rational irrationality. These factors pollute the epistemic commons, decrease institutional trust, and enact epistemic injustice. Unfortunately, it is difficult to separate democratic governance from incentivizing bullshit.
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  12.  45
    Better Not to Know: On the Possibility of Culpable Knowledge.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.
    Many philosophers hold there are genuine cases of culpable ignorance. This paper argues that there are conditions that can render knowledge epistemically culpable too. First, we contrast culpable ignorance with morally culpable knowledge. Second, we examine the nature of epistemically culpable knowledge using a key example. We then highlight empirical support for the claim that there are real-world conditions that make epistemically culpable knowledge possible. Next, we survey three kinds of epistemic culpability fostered by culpable knowledge. Finally, we address the (...)
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  13. You 're an animal, plain and simple'.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2014 - Think 13 (36):61-70.
    In this essay, I argue that we are merely biological organisms. This view (animalism) explains everyday practices like watching ourselves in the mirror. The claim that we are psychological in nature cannot explain something as trivial as watching ourselves in the mirror. Thus, we should accept animalism.
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  14.  76
    On Merely Modal Epistemic Peers: Challenging the Equal-Weight View.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (3):809-823.
    There is a controversy, within social epistemology, over how to handle disagreement among epistemic peers. Call this the problem of peer disagreement. There is a solution, i.e. the equal-weight view, which says that disagreement among epistemic peers is a reason for each peer to lower the credence they place in their respective positions. However, this solution is susceptible to a serious challenge. Call it the merely modal peers challenge. Throughout parts of modal space, which resemble the actual world almost completely, (...)
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  15.  23
    Sceptical theism and the problem of epistemic evil: Why sceptical theism is philosophically costly.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - Balkan Journal of Philosophy 5 (2):175-180.
    Sceptical theism is supposed, by a number of philosophers, to undercut the evidential basis for the evidential problem of evil. In this paper, I argue that even ifsceptical theism succeeds, its success comes with a hefty epistemic price: it threatens to undermine a good deal of what we supposedly know. Call this the problem of epistemic evil. Thus, sceptical theism has a costly philosophical price of admission. In light of this, it seems that the evidential problem of evil is harder (...)
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  16. Still No Suicide for Presentists: Why Hales’ Response Fails.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2012 - Logos and Episteme (1):149-155.
    In this paper, I defend my original objection to Hales’ suicide machine argument against Hales’ response. I argue Hales’ criticisms are either misplaced or underestimate the strength of my objection; if the constraints of the original objection are respected, my original objection blocks Hales’ reply. To be thorough, I restate an improved version of the objection to the suicide machine argument. I conclude that Hales fails to motivate a reasonable worry as to the supposed suicidal nature of presentist time travel.
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  17.  17
    Properly Functioning Brains and Personal Identity.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2018 - Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 23:77-81.
    Surely, I persist through time; thus, I must be identical to something that persists through time. But, what is identical to me, which persists through time? First, I argue that we should take reductive materialism and the Lockean view of personal identity seriously. But, these positions appear in tension. Second, I argue a plausible way to reconcile them is to embrace a novel kind of animalism that I call neural animalism. This says that I am identical to my properly functioning (...)
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  18. No Suicide for Presentists: A Response to Hales.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2011 - Logos and Episteme 2 (3):455-464.
    Steven Hales constructs a novel argument against the possibility of presentist time travel called the suicide machine argument. Hales argues that if presentism were true, then time travel would result in the annihilation of the time traveler. But such a consequence is not time travel, therefore presentism cannot allow for the possibility of time travel. This paper argues that in order for the suicide machine argument to succeed, it must make (at least) one of two assumptions, each of which beg (...)
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  19. Freedom of Expression and the Argument from Self-Defense.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2022 - Think 21 (62):23-31.
    Some philosophers hold that stifling free expression stifles intellectual life. Others reply that freedom of expression can harm members of marginalized groups by alienating them from social life or worse. Yet we should still favour freedom of expression, especially where marginalized groups are concerned. It's better to know who has repugnant beliefs as it allows marginalized groups to identify threats: free expression qua self-defence.
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  20.  35
    Why the Heck Would You Do Philosophy?Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2023 - Logos and Episteme 14 (2):163-177.
    Philosophy plausibly aims at knowledge; it would thus be tempting to hold that much of the value of doing philosophy turns on securing knowledge. Enter the agnostic challenge: suppose that a philosophical agnostic (named 'Betsy‘) wants to discover only fundamental philosophical truths. However, the intractable disagreement among philosophical experts gives her pause. After reflecting on expert disagreement, she decides that doing philosophy, for her truth-seeking error-avoiding purposes, is irrational. In this paper, I argue that the agnostic challenge isn‘t easily overcome. (...)
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  21.  15
    My Body, My Speech.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2024 - Think 23 (66):43-46.
    A popular tactic for defending abortion rights is appealing to self-ownership: since I own my body, a foetus has the right to occupy it only if I allow it. One cannot be forced to bring a pregnancy to term because that would violate one's self-ownership. The same logic applies to speech: we have freedom of speech because we produce speech using the bodies that we own. To curtail that speech violates our self-ownership, or in a phrase: my body, my speech.
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  22. The Fine-Tuning Argument and the Problem of Poor Design.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (2):411-426.
    My purpose, in this paper, is to defend the claim that the fine-tuning argument suffers from the poor design worry. Simply put, the worry is this: if God created the universe, specifically with the purpose of bringing about moral agents, we would antecedently predict that the universe and the laws of nature, taken as a whole, would be well-equipped to do just that. However, in light of how rare a life-permitting universe is, compared to all the ways the universe might (...)
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  23.  40
    Dissecting the Suicide Machine Argument: Insights from the Hales – Licon Debate.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - Logos and Episteme 4 (3):339-352.
    I assess the debate over the Suicide Machine Argument. There are several lessons to be learned from this debate. First, there is a fruitful distinction to be made,between tensed and tenseless versions of presentism, despite the temptation to suppose that presentism is a tensed theory of time. Second, once we’ve made the distinction between different kinds of presentism, it is clear that Licon’s objection protects the tenseless version of presentism from the Suicide Machine Argument; however, the argument is still effective (...)
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  24.  71
    Modest meta‐philosophical skepticism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2019 - Ratio 32 (2):93-103.
    Intractable disagreement among philosophers is ubiquitous. An implication of such disagreement is that many philosophers hold false philosophical beliefs (i.e. at most only one party to a dispute can be right). Suppose that we distribute philosophers along a spectrum arranged from philosophers with mostly true philosophical beliefs on one end (high‐reliability), to those with mostly false philosophical beliefs on the other (low‐reliability), and everyone else somewhere in‐between (call this is the reliability spectrum). It is hard to see how philosophers could (...)
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  25. Does a Just Society Require Just Citizens?Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2023 - Philosophy Now.
    There is a solid empirical evidence for moral mediocrity: people aim to be about as morally good, and as morally bad, as those around them. This can be good if most people are saints, and very bad if most people are moral monsters. And here we derive an important insight: we can have a just society without just citizens--that is, citizens who act just only from peer pressure, and not from moral reason--provided most people in that society, for whatever reason, (...)
     
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  26. Moral Manipulation & The Problem of Evil.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - Philosophy Now 99:17-19.
     
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  27.  31
    Santa Claus and the Problem of Evil.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2017 - Philosophy Now 123:24-25.
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  28.  32
    Skeptical Hypotheses and Moral Skepticism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2020 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18 (3).
    May argues that moral skepticism is less plausible than perceptual skepticism if it’s formulated using epistemic closure. In this paper, I argue we should be skeptical of the implausibility thesis. Moral skepticism can be formulated using closure if we combine moral nihilism with a properly formulated evolutionary scenario. Further, I argue that pace May, the phenomenon of ‘imaginative resistance’ isn’t an issue for the moral skeptic; she has an evolutionary explanation of the phenomenon. Thus, we should be skeptical of the (...)
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  29.  51
    The Counterpart Argument for Modal Scepticism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - Logos and Episteme 4 (1):21-29.
    Surely, it is possible that you believe falsely about this-or-that modal matter. In light of the various ways the world could be arranged, it is plausible thatthere is a nearby possible world, which would be almost identical to the actual world, if it were actualized, where you and your modal counterpart disagree over modal belief p. You might be tempted to think that your modal belief is true, while hers is not. It is not clear why this is so; after (...)
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  30.  48
    The time shuffling machine and metaphysical fatalism.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2015 - Think 14 (41):57-68.
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  31.  21
    Why Disdain Replicated Art? Metaphysics and Art in ‘The Elephant in the Brain’.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2021 - Philosophia 50 (2):605-617.
    Why disdain replicated art? If art is valuable because it evokes experiences of beauty, they should be comparable. In chapter 11 of the Elephant in the Brain, Simler and Hanson argue we actually care about the extrinsic properties of art—e.g. who made it—to signal our intelligence and taste. Here I defend a different explanation for the evidence cited by S&H: the extrinsic properties of art are central to what constitutes art, play a bigger role fixing the value of art than (...)
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