March 18, 2014

March 18, 2014

Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Because speech only makes sense if it is seen or heard, that is, if it is overt, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) evolve, like any other behavior of any other species, as behavior of the whole organism during our life time. References to invisible parts, such as our brains or our minds, cannot bring us any closer to ourselves, cannot bring us in touch with each other, and cannot lead to the kind of interaction which makes and keeps us conscious, because reference to invisible parts maintains the illusion that the description is more important than the described. Description is only important to the extent that it describes behavior correctly and gives us predictive control. Descriptions are useless and confusing if they do not give control over behavior that is described. As we know, many such descriptions exist. We are only able to separate inaccurate from accurate descriptions during SVB. That is why SVB is the category of verbal behavior which maintains more accurate descriptions and NVB contains the inaccurate ones.

  

The consequence of this learning is nothing to be guessed at, because it is clearly visible everywhere. NVB is ubiquitous because our interaction is primarily based on inaccurate descriptions. They determine not only individual lives, but also the lives we live together and how we organize our world. The same selective principles, the same environmental, external pressures that gave rise to living organisms across the generations, are responsible for the manifestation of SVB and NVB. Whether SVB, accurate descriptions, will be able to increase depends on environmental stimuli that make it possible. Prediction and control of SVB and NVB, which are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposing categories of verbal behavior, should be based on what we know about the similarity between learning and evolution, which work exactly the same. Private or covert speech is and has always been public speech and should be treated as such. We should let others know what we really feel and think and get it off our chest. In SVB we can embody our language and acknowledge that all behavior is externally caused. 

We will not all of a sudden realize that all human behavior, including our mind, is caused by environmental stimuli. This is primarily a consequence of how we talk. To think that this writing is going to bridge that gap is unrealistic. It hasn’t and it can’t. We need to talk to be able to differentiate between SVB and NVB. In other words, our accurate and inaccurate descriptions can only be discriminated during our public speech. If writing leads to SVB, then it is meaningful, but if it prevents it, as it almost always does, it inadvertently leads to NVB. 

 

Other than by talking, we have no other way of knowing if we are refining or preventing the flow of discriminative stimuli. It is not our personal fault that we have been fooled so many times. We can’t help but see it our way, because we have been forced into our belief in agency. Once our private speech is expressed again publicly, we know that it had to be said. Not publicly expressing our private speech and not being able to say what we think and feel has estranged us from our environment . It gave rise to mental health issues. 

SVB is pragmatic because it makes us think about what would happen if we could continue with it. Because the usefulness of SVB is self-evident, it is almost impossible not to think about its positive long-term consequences. The thought of having it in the future makes us dedicate ourselves to knowing more about it and to creating the circumstances in which it can occur. Yet, we continue to behave as if NVB is true, because we have suffered its negative consequences. We were mainly conditioned by NVB and punished for causing our own behavior.

Much misbehavior was reinforced by escape from the punishing effects of NVB. Perhaps most of what has been written was a function of our escape from NVB. With SVB, because we are saying more things, because our public speech will be more accurate and complete, there will be less of a need to write things.