May 1, 2014

May 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

Today’s writing concludes this author’s response to the paper "Values and the Science of Culture of Behavior Analysis”(2007) by Ruiz and Roche. Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and SVB only can provide the necessary verbaland nonverbal contingencies that produce healthy behavior appropriate to all of mankind. Forget for one moment about our behaviorist community and our insolated academic environments. Except for their knowledge of behaviorism, discussion of behaviorists among themselves about values isn’t any different from discussion among non-behaviorists. As rate of responding of SVB for behaviorists isn’t any higher than for non-behaviorists, it can be concluded that knowledge of behaviorism doesn’t lead to any better communication. Behaviorists haven’t been able to make contact with contingencies that set the stage for nuanced academic discussions. 

The philosophical differences, laid out by Ruiz and Roch, should be seen as ways of speaking. Since scientists mainly write and publish papers and read and study the work of others, they often overlook the obvious fact that contingencies pertaining to what they say when they speak and listen, are different from the contingencies that set the stage for what they write when they write and read. In other words, written words do not and cannot bridge the gap between our written and our spoken communication. To believe otherwise flies in the face of the empirical evidence that behaviorists have gathered. This author insists that we must speak with each other to explore the contingencies which pertain to SVB and NVB. Only by our participation in spoken communication can we make discriminative learning possible.

Based on hundreds of seminars and individual sessions that this author conducted over the years and based on his clinical work with those who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder etc., he is convinced that the rules of evidence of scientific inquiry are absolutely adequate to screen out personal, social or cultural influences, but only if Skinner’s thesis of Verbal Behavior is extended with the distinction between SVB and NVB. The last thing any behaviorist needs is another written and therefore meaningless discussion about the general ways in which values can influence practitioners and scientists. Skinner has specifically emphasized that behavior doesn’t depend on prior choice of any value. The summarization of the potential of the value system to guide the actions of behavior analysts is counterproductive, because the lists of values can only be considered as the lists of reinforcers during SVB. In NVB, that very same list, with the same words, is a function of something else. Objectivity as a function of the communal structure of scientific inquiry requires behaviorists to consider how they individually, as whole organisms, are affected by public speech. Also the individual behavior of scientists is still maintained by environmental variables.

When this author once spoke with Hayes it was immediately evident that Hayes wished to remain private about his "value-based personal goals". Hayes is into self-glorification, but is anti-communitarian. After supposedly "achieving his personal values", he declines accountability to the scientific community and justifies his stance with a presumed passion for helping people, when in reality, he is only helping himself. Ruiz and Roche interest in social issues and commitment to promoting progressive practices with a view towards a better future, like Skinner, on the other hand, is more toward the  SVB side of the continuum. That is why they bring in John Dewey.

Dewey, who considered "the highest form of authority the agreement that could be reached by the members of a (verbal) community by means of open, non-coercive communication", was not interested in the truth, but he focused rather on verification. He presented a version of discrimination learning, which he described as a "better justificatory ability". This is congruent with SVB. Moreover, when he writes about speaking, he argues that it "is better to deal with the doubt about what we are saying, by shoring up what we have previously said or by deciding to say something different". Here Dewey seems to indicate the process of recognizing NVB as NVB, so that we can move on again with SVB. He conceives, like this author, of the possibility of continuing with SVB and he describes this process by saying: "moral progress is a matter of wider and wider sympathy."

This author, however, doesn’t think it is very useful to talk about moral progress. It is much more effective to talk about improved communication. If what Dewey suggests happens, we experience improved communication in which we are sounding good, because we are neither negatively influencing each other, nor are we aversively influenced by each other. When we are safe, understood and mutually reinforced, our spoken communication no longer elicits fight, flight or freeze responses. To the contrary, SVB makes more SVB possible and more likely. Our voices and our other nonverbal behaviors elicit autonomic responses, which trigger the communication of positive emotions.

This writer thanks Ruiz and Roche (2007) for bringing this important information together. He would like to talk with them during a skype conversation about the importance of SVB and NVB, the two universally recognized organizing principles of our verbal behavior. This writer has not before responded so elaborately to any behaviorist' writing and is grateful for the fact that this response was evoked. He is convinced that we have the shared goals of being part of one mankind.