How does Yann Martel use Philosophy to draw meaning from an extract of 'The Life Of Pie'.

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How does Yann Martel use Philosophy to draw meaning from an extract of ‘The Life Of Pie’

        

Yann Martel’s, ‘The Life Of Pi’ is a tale that serves to jostle our perception of our world, and question the means by which we base our view of everyday customs. In the famous words of Mr David Hume, ‘Custom is the great guide of human life,’ without these customs that we come to accept as truths, our world becomes a dangerous and intimidating place. This is why in the extract, the reporters attempt to falsify the possibility of a carnivorous Island because it challenges their already unsure perception of the world to the extreme.

Within the extract starting on p.294, Pi provokes the rationalist attitude of the reporters to be tested to the limit. This unconsciously philosophical position that the businessmen take proves to further Pi’s own empirical view of the world. The thought that Pi takes this view is perhaps due to his certainly of a higher principle. That if god was good, he would be safe in whatever choice he made, as long as he was thankful to him. As humans, it is our nature to logically induce that what lies in the future can be judged using the experience of the world that we have accumulated so far,  For instance, that the sun will rise everyday. We have no certainty of this. No amount of scientific proof can prove what is going to happen. It may well be able to predict what might happen with numerous experiences of the same occurrence in the past, but there is no guaranty that the same will happen tomorrow. Moreover, we refuse to look outside our phenomenal world because of this, and make judgements upon prior learned experience or reason. These experiences are then turned into ideas.

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 The point of Pi’s persistence with the argument is to put emphasis upon the natural assumption of induction that we take to draw logical conclusions about the world. Nevertheless, Philosophers like David Hume also take this position in stating that all knowledge comes from our experience. He believes that any idea can be reduced to some prior experience provided by our senses. Like Pi, Hume is lead to believe that humans think they know a huge amount more of the world than is justified. He feels that induction is not an acceptable method of argument. Pi agrees and implies that ...

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