Michael Tomasello

Michael Tomasello ( born January 18, 1950 in Bartow, Florida, United States) is an American anthropologist and ethologist.

Academic Career

After studying psychology at Duke University and a PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Georgia from 1980 to 1998 he taught at Emory University psychology, where he also worked at the National Primate Research Center since 1982. Since 1998 he has been co- director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he directs the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center. Since 1999 he is honorary professor at the University of Leipzig.

Shared intentionality

Michael Tomasello is concerned with the evolution of human language, even the difference between humans and other animals to describe. This led to the development of the concept of shared intentionality (shared intentionality or We - intentionality ):

• There are three basic motives for communication: requesting, informing, parts (food, feelings, attitudes ).
• The human linguistic communication is the result of gestural communication.
• There are basically two different types of gestures to communicate, pointing gestures and iconic gestures. Iconic gestures were in the phylogenetic development of the human being replaced by speech, pointing gestures are used in addition.
• The gestural communication requires an understanding of the intentions of the opponent. The requesting this requires only an understanding of the subjective intentions of the other person, inform and parts are available for a shared intentionality to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and joint intentions. Apes can intentions of other monkeys and humans capture and communicate gestural to prompt. But only people communicate for the purpose of informing and sharing, because only they are voting intentions of each other.
• The parts led to a strong group cohesion. Group selection pressure led to the formation of group norms.

Conventional succession languages ​​emerged from the gestural communication, pointing gestures further complement the linguistic communication. Iconic gestures were replaced by linguistic utterances. By Drift ( gestures are misinterpreted by a lack of understanding of the common background in the community, which is gradually permeated by a new meaning of the gestures ) to changing the meanings of gestures, away from a natural way to an arbitrary meaning.

The evolution of the Requesting communication via the communication informing the dividing communication was accompanied by an increasing complexity of the associated grammars.

The concept is based inter alia on extensive empirical studies on the communication of great apes, the language acquisition of ( small) children, and deaf communication.

Awards and Affiliations

Tomasello is since 2001 member of the Leopoldina, 2004, he received the International Prize of the Fyssen Foundation. Tomasello 2006 was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 2009 with the Hegel Prize of the City of Stuttgart and the Oswald- Külpe Prize of the University of Würzburg. 2010 was awarded to him along with Timothy G. Bromage of the Max Planck Research Award. 2011 awarded him the Jacobs Foundation with the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize and of the British Academy, he received the Wiley Prize in Psychology. Tomasello was selected as the Albertus-Magnus Professor 2014, the University of Cologne.

Publications

• The cultural development of human thought. On the Evolution of Cognition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2002.
• The origins of human communication. . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2009 ( Original title: Origins of Human Communication. )
• Why we cooperate. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2010 ( Original title: Why We Cooperate ).