From Predicting Life to Hasty Generalization, Mostafa Malekian

There is no doubt that we cannot make prophecies about the future, and that is beyond the scope of our discussion! So, prophecy is absolutely impossible. But my point is that my life is not even predictable for anyone. For four reasons, one cannot even make predictions about the future:

1) The first reason is that prediction always requires a universal proposition, but how many instances of my life exist in the world? Only one! Therefore, we do not have a universal proposition upon which to base a prediction. How many instances of water do we have in the world? Countless! If we have the proposition that all water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, then we can say that this water is an instance of the concept of water, so if it reaches 100 degrees, it will boil. But how many instances of each of our lives exist in the entire world? Only one! Just as none of us are repeatable, none of our lives are repeatable either. Every human being is a unique and singular entity, with no duplicate or copy from which we could derive a universal rule or law to make predictions.

2) It is not known when life will end. So, because the end of life is unknown, one cannot make predictions about anyone's life. For example, you might say that whenever someone leaves a certain person's class, they are tired, and therefore I predict that I will be tired after that class today. But I would reply: provided you leave that class alive! So, since the end of life is uncertain, you cannot point to similar instances that have occurred in others' lives and claim you can predict your own life.

3) My life does not depend solely on me, so that I could make predictions about it. The form and substance of my life depend on billions upon billions of factors, of which I am only one!

4) My own tastes and preferences also change over the course of my life. For example, I might say I have planned my life to remain thin until the age of ninety, but I might change my mind at ninety. The life we plan is based on my current beliefs, feelings, emotions, and desires.

So, for these reasons, we cannot plan or predict life. This is a belief that future life is in no way predictable. Not even our next second is predictable, let alone ten or twenty years from now. Now that it is unpredictable, a question arises: what benefit does this have for the philosophical life? You see, from ancient times, sages, philosophers, and mystics have told us: as much as you can, to reduce your own pains and sufferings and to increase your pleasures, live a here-and-now life. Let your life always be here-and-now. A here-and-now life means all the realms of your existence should be like your body; your body neither falls a second behind time nor leaps a second ahead. Live in such a way that your mind and psyche also neither fall a second behind time nor leap a second ahead. Even though none of us can do this for even fifteen minutes! Extensive research has shown that we ordinary humans do not live even fifteen minutes of a twenty-four-hour day in the present moment. The sages also said that this way of living, where only the body lives in the present, multiplies the pain and suffering of life several times over and reduces the pleasure of life several times over. Therefore, they advised us that if you want to derive the least possible pain and suffering and the most possible pleasure from life, all the different realms of your existence (that is, your body, your mind, and your psyche) should all live in the present moment. Now, how much benefit this kind of living has, and how much of these benefits are attainable for us or not, is another discussion. But there is an issue, and that is: right now, in the present, I would very much like to eat two kilos of ice cream. On the one hand, you said not to be bound by the past or future at all. Well, for a few minutes I eat two kilos of ice cream and enjoy it for those few minutes, but after a few minutes, I gradually get a stomachache and perhaps a problem arises for me! Then, when I weigh the pleasure of that quarter-hour against the pains and sufferings of the coming hours, the pains of finding a doctor, getting in a car in Tehran traffic, going, the suffering of treatment, and so on, I see that eating two kilos of ice cream was a very wrong thing to do. Even though living in the present and being here and now dictated: see what gives you pleasure right now and eat it. But when I ate it, I see that perhaps other pains and sufferings follow in the future because of this action, and when I calculate, I see that on the whole, the pain and suffering were greater. Then it seems to me that the here-and-now life is wrong. When we consider such cases, we say: so perhaps I should not live in each moment solely in that moment, but rather, for whatever confronts me now, I should calculate the sum total of its results and consequences in the future and see whether to eat this ice cream or not. So, in my calculations, I cannot consider only the pleasures of the here and now; rather, I must calculate the sum of the pleasures of the here and now plus all the pleasures that will follow this pleasure in the future, plus all the pains and sufferings that will come in the future, and if I see that the pleasures are greater, eat that ice cream, and if I see that the pain and suffering are greater, not eat it. It is from this perspective that the first theory is called uncalculated hedonism, and this second view is called calculated hedonism. They say that among the hedonists, some, like Aristippus, believed in uncalculated hedonism, but others, like the Epicureans, are considered calculated hedonists. And it seems that calculated hedonism is more defensible. But a problem also arises in calculated hedonism. And that is: since my parents knew about calculated hedonism and told me from childhood to study, do my homework, and so on, so that years later I would become a top-notch young person. Well, I now forgo this present football, and I also forgo the movie, I don't go to parties, and so on. Instead, I always study, wake up early in the mornings, and start reading, and so forth. Until I turn thirty-seven, and in two months they will give me my specialist degree in heart surgery, but suddenly I have a stroke and die. Well, what did I actually do with these thirty-seven years? Who guaranteed that I would live to that age? But on the other hand, suppose my friend also dies in an accident, but he had enjoyed himself his whole life! Now what should one do? The uncalculated kind has that problem, and the calculated kind has this problem! Can anyone say, "I will remain alive"?

ضمن اینکه فقط زنده ماندن نیست، ممکن است من سی و هفت سال زحمت بکشم اما در امتحان نهایی جراحی مشکلی برایم پیش بیاید و نتوانم امتحان بدهم و حاصل تمام زحماتم را بر باد دهد! چرا که جراح شدن فقط در دست من نیست، برای جراح شدن همه آن درد و رنج ها و مشقت ها فقط یکی از شرایط لازم جراح شدن بوده اند ولی میلیاردها شرط دیگر هم باید به این شرط لازمه ملزم می‌شد و حال تنها یکی از آن ها ملزم نشد! پس اگر بخواهم هدونیسم نسنجیده را ملاک قرار دهم، مشکلش این است که همیشه ممکن است یک لحظه لذت ببرم و لحظات فراوانی درد و رنج بکشم و اگر هم هدونیسم سنجیده را ملاک قرار دهم مشکلش این است که لحظاتی درد و رنج را تحمل می‌کنم برای اینکه لحظات بعدش لذت ببرم اما ممکن است آن لحظات بعد هم درد و رنج سراغمان بیاید! در واقع هدونیسم سنجیده با همان مانعی که گفتیم برخورد کرد؛ با این مشکل که زندگی آدمی پیش بینی پذیر نیست. خب اکنون چه کنیم؟ اینجاست که زندگی فیلسوفانه می‌گوید هدونیسم نسنجیده نه؛ اما هدونیسم اندکی تا قسمتی سنجیده بله. بنابراین چیزهایی که نتیجه اش چند سال بعد است را کنار بگذارید چون هیچ نتیجه اش مشخص نیست. بنابراین من نه آریستیپوس را می‌توانم بپذیرم و نه می‌توانم اپیکوریان را بپذیرم. و بنابراین چاره ای جز این ندارم که زندگی فیلسوفانه را در مقام عمل به خاطر این مولفه عقیدتی معرفتی که آینده ما قابل پیش بینی نیست اما کاری را که می‌خواهد در نظر بگیرد فقط آینده تقریبا یقینی اش را در نظر بگیرد و آینده هایی که در پرده های ابهام هستند را در نظر نمی گیرد را بپذیرم.

The next point that exists in the philosophical life is that the philosophical life is a life that does not place much value on common sense. Common sense is the set of beliefs that all human beings, regardless of whether they are educated or uneducated and regardless of the time and place in which they live, usually all hold. So, in short, the set of beliefs shared by all human beings. This common sense is, in many cases, derived from hasty generalizations. A hasty generalization means that you do not scrutinize sufficiently, and when you have always seen n number of beings possessing two attributes, upon seeing the n+1th being possessing the first attribute, you judge that it also possesses the second. This is called a hasty generalization. For example, in your life you have seen twenty friends who have never betrayed you, then common sense says a friend does not betray a friend, and based on this you establish a friendly relationship, and then suddenly one of these friends betrays you and you are shocked. Schopenhauer was a philosopher who constantly told us to always revise common sense understandings. Your parents, teachers, and educators introduce God knows how many hasty generalizations as laws, and then suddenly you see this law has failed and you are shocked; and then when you pay attention, you see there was never any law at all, and it was a hasty generalization. And many times our practical failures stem from trusting hasty generalizations. Hasty generalizations never have the status of a law and, naturally, the function of a law, and therefore we should not trust them and arrange our relations based on them.

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For the making of this photo-clip, the third session of the lecture series Lectures on the Philosophical Life was used.

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