Why are these called 'laws of thought' (over and above the fact that it is traditional to do so)? Does anyone seriously think that people actually cogitate in syllogisms, or that they use the formal calculi found in Principia Mathematica when they reason?

 

If logic were the science of what went on in people's heads, logicians would busy themselves with brain scans, surveys, psychometric tests, and the like. They certainly would not bother with all those useless theorems and proofs.