 Others have tried to rehabilitate this interpretation and respond to the potential objections. Lee C. Rice (1990) and Christopher Martin (2007) both offer responses to the objections and attempt to defend this interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of consciousness. Their efforts at making sense of 2p19–23 are interesting, but it is not easy from this section of the text to avoid the “absurdly excessive” conclusions. Of course, one could simply bite the bullet here and say that Spinoza is in fact “absurdly excessive”! He is committed to panpsychism, why not take the short step to a similarly extensive account of consciousness? Indeed, the next set of interpretations are prepared to go that far. 