Was the logic tutor wrong?

[Tim the Mage]

I'm still playing with the logic tutor and on the second self quiz re definitions this question came up:

A COW is a bovine mammal.
a) no genus
b) too broad
c) too narrow
d) nonessential
e) circular
f) negative
g) unclear (vague, obscure, metaphorical)


You had to tick the accurate criticism of the above and I ticked (b) because a cow is a FEMALE bovine mammal - but the logic tutor said the correct answer is (e).

I don't mind being wrong but I'd like to know why if I am - or has the tutor missed the existance of bulls?

The cow is, of course, a cow. And her name might be Daisy or Buttercup...or maybe Ermintrude.

The Aristolean logic bit is (how we say) trite - of course a cow is a bovine as that is just semantics. Which much though I love it is the most pointless of philosophical memes.

[Floppit]

The logic tutor is a bit of fun, I'm also learning the boring way, from a book! It's nice to have two sources and two different ways of learning and I think I'm questioning enough not to take any single source as gospel. I agree circular statements can be useful but I'd like to know something is circular - I think I do mostly but there's room to improve.

The Ven diagram stuff is the part I find the hardest, even if I draw out the diagrams I still struggle. I don't struggle too much with 'real world' classification systems it's the abstract ones used to teach that get me in a knot.

When I was teaching autistic children years ago I thought the 'same vs different' programmes and categories were really core stuff. I even mused that maybe intelligence is built on discrimination and grouping together. My foray into formal logic makes me wonder if I was on the money with my musings.

[Pebble]

not all cows are bovine.

female seals are called cows, yet they are phocidae not bovine. They are both mammalian though.

Nice point, it is even worse than that:

cow1   [kou] Show IPA
–noun, plural cows, (Archaic) kine.
1. the mature female of a bovine animal, esp. of the genus Bos.
2. the female of various other large animals, as the elephant or whale.
3. Informal. a domestic bovine of either sex and any age.
4. Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. a large, obese, and slovenly woman.
5. Offensive. a woman who has a large number of children or is frequently pregnant.