 A few clarifications are in order. First, on hearing of Spinoza’s view we might be inclined to protest that human minds represent all sorts of things other than our own bodies: ideas, abstractions, other bodies, etc. (Wilson 1999: ch. 9). But, to be clear, Spinoza isn’t proposing here, rather implausibly, that we represent nothing but our own bodies. His claim is rather about what constitutes the essential intentional object of the human mind: other ideas composing my mind may come and go, but to remain the same mind across time, and distinct from other equally complex bundles of ideas, my mind must continue to represent a particular physical entity. Moreover, Spinoza holds that we are able to represent all the other things we represent only because we first conceive of our own body (for details, see 3.2 and 4).