Rigid and fluid interactions with institutions

In two recent papers, Shaun Gallagher asks the question of how we interact with institutions. To answer it, he proposes to expand Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind hypothesis into the societal realm. He introduces the idea of the socially extended mind, to reflect the fact that social institutions can help us to perform cognitive tasks that we would not be able to do without them. Drawing on work by Carol Gilligan, I argue that the socially...