Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind To which are Added, An Essay on Quantity, and An Analysis of Aristotle's Logic ... By Thomas Reid
The idea that ridicule can be a test of truth was made famous by Shaftesbury; I haven't looked very extensively, but this is the only case I've ever come across of someone accepting it. The problem that's usually raised with using ridicule as a test is that ridicule often suggests more about the mind engaging in it than about the position ridiculed -- a frivolous mind will ridicule anything with which he disagrees.
(My own view is that ridicule is a test of nothing; rather, it's a rhetorical move, and like every rhetorical move is designed to move and influence. The real test is not ridicule but the quality of the reasoning and the accuracy of the representations that lead you to recognize something as ridiculous. That is, what does all the work is not the ridicule but its justness, to use the word Hume would use.)
