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Show slate. The Eleventh Hour Item #1 Take 3, Show #112

Funding for the show by charitable organizations announced and overlay on the Eleventh Hour Graphic

Tilt down on show host Robert Lipsyte and z'in. Lipsyte at his desk with an open book, looks up at camera and takes off his eyeglasses. He talks about the program's topic, philosophy and cuts away to a philosophy 101 statement, Tarsky's Theory of Truth, written on a slate board.

The Eleventh Hour graphic

Host Lipsyte introduces his first guest sitting on sofa, Matthew Lipman - a teacher who teaches critical thinking to 6 year olds, and Founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children.

Guest Matthew Lipman picks up book and reads an excerpt from it.

close up on cute little blond haired six year old girl

close wide shot of male and female kids sitting cross legged holding pages of a manuscript

Three children, six years old, sitting cross legged, a white boy, little white girl and an Asian girl listening.

Little boy sitting cross legged on floor with other children of different nationalities, Asian, African American and White, asks a questions.

Small Caucasian boy about six, sitting next to African American little girl, answers a question intelligently. African American child is seen playing with her hair as he speaks.

close up on the face of cute little African American girl.

Male child in striped shirt, looking puzzled, poses a question.

var shots, six year old kids, fidgeting, thinking

Beautiful little six year old African American girl with braided hair and yellow bows, wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt.

Eastern Indian female six year old, disagreeing with other kids, giving her opinion.

Interview with Matthew Lipman concludes. Host Lipsyte thanks Lipman and announces upcoming guests, a doctor/philosopher.

Show returns, tilt down on Host Lipsyte sitting at small round table with two other gentlemen as The Eleventh Hour Graphic fades out.

Interview continues with Host Lipsyte, Dr. Callahan and Dr. Cassell

Robert Lipsyte:
Let me stop this philosophical dialogue right now and ask a question. You call it philosophy? It kind of sounds to me like humanitarian thinking that the doctor no longer the godlike creature making decisions in other people's lives?

Dr. Daniel Callahan:
Well, in one sense, philosophy is interested in two things, it certainly interested in certain moral truths. Is there a truth about falsehood and lying? Should we always tell the truth? That's a long standing philosophical question. The other side of the coin is how do we how do we talk about truth telling in the context of actual human relationships? This is the kind of applied side anybody can say you should always tell the truth, or sometimes it's okay to lie. The question is, what difference does it make? Depending upon the person you're dealing with a five year old, a thiry year old, an eighty year old and healthy person, a dying person, context and relationship is part of really understanding the philosophical nature of things.

Robert Lipsyte :
Did physicians feel threatened when when philosophers first began talking to them?

Dr. Eric Cassell:
Well, physicians get hives when philosophers come around. We like to believe we're a pragmatist. We have this hard science we do, I think. So, we don't like people questioning as I suspected, they even even interviewers don't like too many questions coming the other way?

Robert Lipsyte:
Well, that's a very good point. And let's, let's talk about that for a moment. I mean, you deal with life and death. But so to some other people. It would seem like a philosopher in a precinct house, a philosopher right here at the 11th hour, could do us all world of good.

Dr. Daniel Callahan:
Well, we all have to have some way of looking at life, we have to have some way of dealing with our moral conflicts. And I suppose what philosophers have traditionally done is try to bring some clarification of that try to get people in a way to step out, step out of themselves a little bit, look on what they're doing and ask "is that the right thing? What is the right thing?" And how do I go about deciding what the right thing is? Those are hard questions. But in a way you can, I suppose philosophers have believed that you can make progress with them with that over a period of time, you can make sense and get onto something.

Robert Lipsyte:
And what we've been talking about here today is, is being more reflective, thinking through things, stepping back, talking about our acts and their consequences. What does this have to do with all those courses which I was made to memorize Schopenhauer and Kant, and Spinoza, and Plato?

Dr. Daniel Callahan:
Well, of course, there's a history to this field that goes back in the West, it goes back to Plato and Aristotle. And I suppose the problem with the way the subject is often taught, it's taught as one more body of knowledge that you're supposed to memorize. And I, I tend to look at philosophy is very much trying to help us think about ourselves and think about ourselves in relationship to the world. But that means, not just memorizing facts or names or arguments, but but but constantly sort of turning it back in and saying, "What do I want to be? What do I think is right and wrong? What kind of a person? Should I be? What What is life all about?" And, and that that's a tough process. I think we'd all like to evade it simply by thinking, well, I'll read Plato, and I'll learn the answer that way. Or Plato tells us you better think much harder bet yourself, and he doesn't give you an answer.

Robert Lipsyte:
What about some of the hard stuff, pulling feeding tubes, when to let someone live when to let someone die?

Dr. Eric Cassell:
Well, I think this is a perfect example of how philosophy is move medicine forward. Ordinary technical criteria will not tell you what to do in these circumstances. And physicians have been conflicted- it is my job to keep people alive at all costs. That's the way we used to talk fifty years ago, twenty years, ten years ago? And is this the person I meant when I said at all costs. And yet, if I haven't been trained in it, there's nobody to help me think my way through it. Generally, like everybody else, I dropped back on pat answers or preconceived notions. So if there is the perfect example, if I can say that some physician "oh I understand that you don't want to do it, but would you tell me why you're doing what you're doing?" and doctors are smart people, and they're well trained, and with a little help they get the light that. In the beginning, it makes it look like it's going to be harder. And I think what Dan is trying to point out is it doesn't make it harder, it makes it easier to do your work.

Robert Lipsyte :
You're a better doctor, since you've become a philosopher as well.

Dr. Eric Cassell:
Well, there's just no question that I'm a happier doctor.

Robert Lipsyte:
You saw those those six year old kids learning philosophy and

Dr. Eric Cassell:
Right.

Robert Lipsyte:
What do you think of that?

Dr. Eric Cassell:
Why, why it was wonderful! I mean,

Robert Lipsyte:
Had, had that? Had you been in that class, when, when you were in the in the first grade? Do you think you would have needed Dr. Callahan?

Dr. Eric Cassell:
Yes. But you know, I think when I was in the first grade, and maybe you too, what somebody would have said is well, we don't have time for that now, Eric, we're learning reading. So that isn't so much that they're those kids have a natural bet the "why why why why why?" Have children can be turned into to a much more trained? "Why why why?" I was just told, like you were told, not now. And that's class says "yes, now!" So I think in that regard, it was wonderful.

Robert Lipsyte:
But the fact that we need philosophers to teach us things that seem so basic and human, indicates it's kind of a certain something's missing in the society.

Dr. Daniel Callahan:
Well, in a way, yeah. In one sense. Look, human beings never get the deepest, most difficult questions quite straight. That's right. philosophy has always had its had something to do for 2500 years and will always have thing to do. On the other hand, a society is probably in trouble if it has to reduce everything to the deepest sort of philosophical question, because it's, it no longer knows what's right and wrong anymore, that, that a society is really in trouble. And if you if it's too desperate for philosophers, I don't think philosophers can help it at that point, ironically.

Robert Lipsyte:
Now, the rub between philosophy and religion, because some of these things we're talking about, particularly life and death in your field, are coming in up against religious conviction.

Dr. Eric Cassell:
While they are but you know, but Dan is making is an important point though. Nobody really knows how to live their life well and, and yet, it's all crucially important to us in medicine, how do we view God? How do we view the sick person in this business of being taught to somehow reason our way through to what is it we believe, rather than falling back too little and too late on answers that don't really meet our needs. What philosophy and medicine anyway allows doctors and people to do is to deal with the hard things that come down in a way that's not easy, it's never is easy, but at least it's human.

Robert Lipsyte:
Last quick question, as as the quickly appointed philosopher of the 11th hour, what should we be thinking about?

Dr. Daniel Callahan:
You should be thinking about the your obligations to the public, what kind of person you want to be as somebody in journalism, what do you think the public needs to know? What, what's, what are some of the problems in our society and how do you get people to reflect more deeply upon those problems, not just telling you their problems? I know that they know it's a mess in our society in many places. The question is, what should they? What should they learn about to make a difference here? And what kind of a society ultimately do they want? That's the philosophical question and the one that I think you can raise. You have to insinuate that you have to push it in, but it's there and it's fundamental.

Robert Lipsyte:
So we're going to have a philosopher with a beeper in the newsrooms as well as in the emergency room.

Dr. Daniel Callahan:
Don't smile, not a bad idea!

Robert Lipsyte:
It's a good idea. Dr. Casell, Dr. Callahan, two philosophers. Thank you very, very much.

Credits over clips from the show.

reel end.