Cognition and Intelligence After the Post-Human Turn Insights from the Brain-Gut Axis

Abstract

This article discusses how the post‑human turn in science and society is framing cognition, mind and intelligence taking as empirical case the gut‑brain axis developed within microbiome science. The article brings into dialogue authors from different disciplines that deal with the relationship between cognition and posthumanism, with the aim to indicate posthumanism’s potential but also to warn about the risk of its – more or less conscious – engulfment into a neoliberal framework. Bringing into dialogue an ontoepistemic and a sociopolitical analysis – debates that are too often kept separated – the article indicates that the ‘becoming environmental’ of cognition, mind and intelligence, far from simply being a dehumanizing gesture that causes anthropocentrism to crumble, is still a very human endeavour, deeply rooted in human history and its varied desires and political aspirations.