Full Idea
A physical ontology has a place for states of mind. An inspiration or a hallucination can, like the fit of ague, be identified with its host for the duration. It leaves our mentalistic idioms fairly intact, but reconciles them with a physical ontology.
Gist of Idea
A hallucination can, like an ague, be identified with its host; the ontology is physical, the idiom mental
Source
Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI)
Book Reference
Quine,Willard: 'Ways of Paradox and other essays' [Harvard 1976], p.243
A Reaction
Quine is employing the same strategy that he uses for substances and properties (Idea 8461): take the predication as basic, rather than reifying the thing being predicated. The ague analogy suggests that Quine is an incipient functionalist.
Related Idea
Idea 8461 The category of objects incorporates the old distinction of substances and their modes [Quine]