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Single Idea 22760

[filed under theme 13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge ]

Full Idea

The madman is a trustworthy criterion of the appearances which occur in madness.

Gist of Idea

Madmen are reliable reporters of what appears to them

Source

Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], I.062)

Book Ref

Sextus Empiricus: 'Against the Logicians', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Harvard Loeb 1997], p.33

A Reaction

It is hard to conceive of an genuinely insane person deliberately misreporting their hallucinations. They are, of course, the sole witness.

The 14 ideas with the same theme [reliability that is needed for secure knowledge]:

303 Say how many teeth the other has, then count them. If you are right, we will trust your other claims [Plato]
22760 Madmen are reliable reporters of what appears to them [Sext.Empiricus]
22325 A belief is knowledge if it is true, certain and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey]
19724 Belief is knowledge if it is true, certain, and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey]
6356 Maybe a reliable justification must come from a process working with its 'proper function' [Plantinga, by Pollock/Cruz]
6875 Reliability involves truth, and truth is external [Goldman]
8829 Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman]
8810 If someone rejects good criticism through arrogance, that is irrelevant to whether they have knowledge [Feldman/Conee]
8889 Reliabilists disagree over whether some further requirement is needed to produce knowledge [Bonjour]
3573 Externalist reliability refers to a range of conventional conditions [Williams,M]
2740 A reliability theory of knowledge seems to involve truth as correspondence [Audi,R]
9165 Reliability only makes a rule reasonable if we place a value on the truth produced by reliable processes [Field,H]
10343 Process reliabilism has been called 'virtue epistemology', resting on perception, memory, reason [Kusch]
19727 Reliabilist knowledge is evidence based belief, with high conditional probability [Comesaņa]