Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), alongside the rise of posthumanist discourse, calls for a fundamental re-evaluation of human identity and renews the question of what it means to be human in the age of intelligent machines. Both traditional dualistic theological models, which prioritize an immaterial soul detached from bodily existence, and transhumanist accounts that reduce the self to brain-centered data and computational processes, fail to adequately capture the holistic unity and relational character of human personhood. This article critically examines the conceptual limitations of posthumanist approaches to identity and argues that sustaining a meaningful account of human identity requires a robust theoretical framework grounded in the synergy between theology and embodied cognition. By emphasizing the psychosomatic unity of body and consciousness, and through a critical engagement with contemporary models of embodied theology, the article proposes an integrative perspective capable of addressing the existential challenges and identity crises generated by ongoing technological transformation.