On this basis, some have taken this assertion of the identity of soul and mixture as representing Galen’s final position, or at least that which he finds most plausible (see most recently Marechal 2019; Vinkesteijn 2019). A consideration of all the relevant evidence seems to lead to a less clear-cut picture. Interpretation of QAM must take into account the polemical nature and structure of the text, which is aimed at refuting the extreme denial of bodily influence by certain “self-styled Platonists”, and in that context proceeds by giving as strong a statement as possible of the physicalist aspect of the theories found in a range of medical and philosophical authorites (Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics; see Lloyd 1988). More specifically, what look like the clearest identity statements ((a) and (d) above) come in dialectical contexts; it is at least arguable that Galen is here asserting the identity position not as his own but as the correct Aristotelian conclusion, on the basis of their equation of soul with form (Singer 2013, Ch. 4). (It should also be mentioned that the passages in question are not free from textual and interpretive problems.) Passages (b) and (c), meanwhile, clearly affirm the identity of the mortal parts of the soul with bodily mixtures. That, then, would be a definitive conclusion about the non-rational parts; but, within this same text, even after statement (d), Galen leaves open the Platonic possibility that the (rational) soul is a non-bodily substance. As we have seen (§3.4), such indeterminacy is consistent with his explicit statements of ignorance—including in texts probably later than QAM—on this very question, the “substance of the soul”. (Those other statements do not in fact specify that it is only the rational soul that is at issue; but, as we have seen, Galen may, somewhat confusingly, use “psuchē” with that narrower reference.) Other relevant evidence is the lack of clarity, in the medical texts mentioned above, as to the causal relation between mental events and physical correlates; and that some kind of interactionist picture seems implied by statements about the mutually beneficial relationship of soul and body and of their respective training (especially in San. Tu., e.g., I.8, 19–21). An important contribution to the discussion is Havrda 2017, arguing, on the basis of a wide range of texts, that for Galen mixture provides a sufficient causal account of all but a distinct range of goal-directed functions.