Cahoone- Corey Maiden

I have done some outside reading about the study of philosophy in general and one of the things I came across was an interesting definition of philosophy by Cahoone. In "The Ends of Philosophy", Cahoone is defining philosophy in two different sections. The question that the introduction of the book brings up for me is whether or not Cahoone thinks that it is responsible to seriously discuss questions that can clearly not be answered with the knowledge that we have today. The two different sections of philosophy that Cahoone describes are tasks construed modestly and tasks construed immodestly. Modestly being those tasks which are answerable through logical steps and immodest being those tasks that are not answerable by taking logical steps. In the first few sentences he states, "Construed modestly, the tasks of philosophy are eminently achievable, making its justification unnecessary. Philosophers increase our knowledge of our ideas and theories." (Cahoone1) I found this funny because he makes no mention of immodestly construed philosophical tasks before making the statement about how modest philosophy increases our knowledge. The tone that is set even in the first few sentences of the text is that modestly construed philosophy is the branch which offers all of the advancement of knowledge. Cahoone also defines philosophy by giving the counter argument which he describes as "Anti-philosophy".(Cahoone 4) By doing this he shows that his argument for philosophy being for the betterment of society is stronger, and all the reasons why the argument against philosophy is lazy and complacent, but does he include immodest philosophy in his defense of the practice modestly construed philosophy? I don’t think so. "Philosophy is a respectable citizen, whose membership in the cultural community is not in question." (Cahoone 1) This is the last thing that Cahoone states before he begins to talk about immodest philosophy. Then he moves directly into saying things about immodestly construed philosophical tasks to suggest that this form of philosophy is almost arrogant. He describes immodest philosophy as taken "...too seriously." (Cahoone 1) This is such a clear example of how Cahoone feels toward immodestly construed philosophical tasks. He sees this brand of philosophy as silly and not bettering our body of knowledge or at least not as well as those tasks construed modestly. Maybe he sees modest philosophy as working on problems from what we know rather than looking at what we don’t know to try and figure out capital T-Truth.