 Gómez Pereira (1500–?) was a Spanish physician and philosopher who is mainly known for having formulated a complete theory of animal mechanism a hundred years before Descartes. In the context of the debate over the immortality of the soul, he defended a radical division between the soul and the body, and a conception of the soul as simple form whose essential activity lies in self-consciousness. Pereira was an alumnus of the University of Salamanca, where he met the new pedagogical methods developed by nominalists as well as an increasing interest on natural philosophy.  From a heterodox point of view, he addressed some physical and metaphysical topics in his books. Pereira rejected some concepts widely accepted in his time such as prime matter, common sense or intelligible species. Grounded upon a psychology that gave priority to simplicity, he replaced the scholastic theory of cognitive faculties with a new one in which the intentional act became relevant. For Pereira the subject and the object constitute a unity that can only be conceptually separated; this unity is determined by the conception of the mind as pure attention that is capable of perceiving itself.