<p>Current externalist approaches to cognition are not able to fully account for the social construction of cognitive niches. We think that the notion of cognitive institution can address this issue. Cognitive institutions are institutions without which some of the agents’ cognitive processes would not exist or even be possible, as they allow agents to perform specific cognitive processes in the social domain. We posit that cognitive institutions are scalable entities and play the role of bootstrapping mechanisms as they make possible the social construction of specific cognitive niches through self-constituting and self-sustaining processes, without requiring heteronomous forces.</p>