OBJECTIVE VALIDITY OF THE "LAWS OF THOUGHT"
I once inquired of a maid-servant whether her mistress was at home. She
replied, in a doubtful fashion, that she _thought_ that her mistress was
in unless she was out. I concluded that the maid was uncertain as to the
objective validity of the law of excluded middle, and remarked that to
her mistress. But since I used the phrase "laws of thought," the
mistress perhaps supposed that a "law of thought" has something to do
with thinking and seemed to imagine that I wished to impute to the maid
some moral defect of an unimportant nature. Thus she remonstrated with
me in an amused way, since she probably imagined that I meant to find
fault with the maid's capacity for thinking.