Question
Identify the fallacy committed by the Records Department, and explain how its actions commit that fallacy.
“There were the vast depositories where the corrected documents were stored, and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.” (a description of the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth in 1984 by George Orwell)
“There were the vast depositories where the corrected documents were stored, and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.” (a description of the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth in 1984 by George Orwell)
A post hoc, ergo propter hoc
B false analogy
C red herring
D stacked evidence
This question is taken from English 104 – Critical Analysis and Literature » Fall 2021 » Midterm Exam
