Extending the Transhuman Person: Religious Practices as Cognitive Technological Enhancements
Religions March 26, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3390/rel16030272 via DOAJ
Summary
Religious practices function as cognitive technologies that enhance human mental capabilities, not by modifying the brain or body directly but by recruiting environmental and social resources to extend and scaffold thought. Drawing on 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognition and Andy Clark's concept of humans as 'natural-born cyborgs', the article argues that religious rituals, artifacts, and communal structures have long served to augment cognitive functions.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Religious practices can be understood as cognitive technologies that enhance human cognition, bridging Christian theology and transhumanism by reframing enhancement as a historical and ongoing process. |
Abstract
Transhumanism embraces the use of technology to enhance human capabilities. In keeping with traditional theories of cognition, transhumanists typically assume that mental capacities are organism-bound (or brain-bound), and enhancement is thus achieved exclusively by modifying the human organism. However, 4E cognition challenges this assumption. Instead, understanding the mind as extended or scaffolded highlights how cognitive processes recruit environmental resources to perform their tasks. Therefore, as Andy Clark argues, cognitive enhancement is no longer restricted to modifications of the biological organism but is also achieved by using cognitive tools or niches that allow brain–body–world coalitions to perform more efficient or more sophisticated cognitive functions. Hence, humans are ‘natural-born cyborgs’ who have long been using environmental resources to enhance cognitive abilities. In this article, I extend this analysis to religion. Drawing on recent work on 4E cognition in religious practices, I argue that religious practices can themselves be understood as ‘cognitive technologies’ that count as enhancements. These insights from cognitive science serve to reframe the dialog between Christian theology and transhumanism: (1) enhancements are reframed as belonging to a long history of self-modification, rather than being the sole purview of the future, (2) humans should be understood as intrinsically technological, and (3) theologians are already in the enhancement game and, conversely, transhumanists should consider religious practices.