May 16, 2015

May 16, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Learning about behaviorism is similar to learning about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), as both involve acquiring a new way of talking, which in turn demands a new way of looking at the reality.  In the beginning of his book “Learning” (2013, p.4) Catania points out that “If we want to talk about these events in new ways, we must take care not to confuse our new ways of talking with the old ways. We’ve all spend most of our lives talking about what we do, but those familiar ways may interfere with our new ways of talking, so we must be aware of language traps.” (underlining added). He is talking about experiences he has had and he seems to be referring to matters which are quite common. Problems with “language traps” are apparently so profound and widespread that a special warning is needed.  

From the statement above it is clear, however, that Catania doesn’t give much weight to the difference between written and spoken verbal behavior. He uses words like “talk about these events”, without specifying that “these events” only refer to actual talking behaviors and are not identical with his writing behavior. Although he may have felt he was talking while he was writing and although the reader may feel he or she is listening to someone who was speaking, this “language trap” is evidently not worth Catania's consideration. Like any other non-behaviorist writer, Catania assumes the role of speaker and the reader is expected to assume the role of listener. In reality neither speaking nor listening is happening. There is only Catania who writes about talking and then the reader is reading about talking. 

      

Yet, Catania’s writing refers to talking, to speaking behavior and to listening behavior. If we reread the first sentence, we find out why it is so easy to “confuse our news ways of talking with the old ways [of talking]” (underlining and words added). If we keep making the same mistake, we repeat our old ways of talking, that is, in our old ways of talking we keep writing and reading about talking and we keep thinking that we are talking, while in reality, we are only writing and reading. Even when we talk, we don’t really talk as long as we mainly talk about what we have written. 

The longer our writing and reading are considered as if we are speaking and listening, the less we will be inclined to speak and listen and the more we will be inclined to write and to read. Actually, it is more likely that we will end up reading rather than writing, because only a small portion of writers are read and can realistically be read. Nevertheless, this is where we are today: writing and reading are considered to be much more important than speaking and listening. As far as there is any similarity between writing and reading and speaking and listening, we could say that the writer is more important than the reader, in the same way that the speaker is more important than the listener. It could also be argued that in the same way that the reader must pay the writer to read, the listener must pay (attention), in NVB, to the speaker. 

Of course, our speaking and listening still matters, it matters more than ever, but the problems which occur during our speaking and listening have not, could not and will never be solved by writing and reading about them. If writing is going to be helpful in solving problems pertaining to our speaking and listening, it must discourage the reader from reading and encourage him or her to become involved in speaking. Moreover, since the speaker who is not listening to him or herself forces the listener to listen and will talk at the listener, the speaker must listen to him or herself, while he or she speaks, so that he or she is perceived by the listener as someone who is talking with, rather than talking at him or her. Whether or not the speaker is listing to him or herself while he or she speaks makes a big difference for the listener, as the listener is stimulated to also become a speaker in the former, but is prevented from becoming a speaker in the latter.  

Catania is writing about the way of talking in which the speaker talks at the listener. I call that way Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. Catania may have new behaviorist content to convey, but his way of talking is as outdated as anyone else, because he elevates writing and reading above speaking and listening. In other words, when Catania writes “If we want to talk about these events in new ways, we must take care not to confuse our new ways of talking with the old ways”, he is only writing about the importance of using the proper terminology, but he is not even writing about talking. Simply stated, he only insists that we must know Chinese to be able to talk Chinese.

Catania states “We’ve all spend most of our lives talking about what we do, but those familiar ways may interfere with our new ways of talking, so we must be aware of language traps.” We used to talk much more, but we don’t talk very much anymore. “Our new ways of talking” refers to the fact that nowadays we mainly write about talking and we talk less and less. Obviously, our old ways of talking interfere with our supposedly new ways of talking. Whether we use proper behaviorist terminology or not, our old ways of talking are our only attempts to talk with each other, whereas these so-called new ways of talking have replaced our talking with writing and reading. What a great progress! 

How is it even possible that our old ways of talking interfere with our new ways of talking? There must be something not quite clear about our new ways of talking. Nobody would still believe that the earth is flat or that it is the center of the universe. Such an old way of thinking would never make its way into our new scientifically-informed educated way of thinking. Why does someone like Catania write about our old ways of talking which interfere with our new ways of talking? It is definitely our old ways of talking which keep the superstitious belief in our behavior-initiating agent going and such talk is incompatible with the science of human behavior. However, how behaviorists stop such talk?  

Behaviorists who have tried to speak about behaviorism haven’t said much that could stop our old ways of talking. In spite of empirical evidence, our old ways of talking have continued. It appears as if our old ways of talking are immune to science. However, according to me this is not the case. Science is capable of changing our old ways of talking, but for that to happen, behaviorist must begin to talk about talking and stop writing and reading about talking and only talk about what they have written and read. Behaviorists must leave behind the illusion that people abandon their old ways of talking by replacing it with a new way of talking, which isn’t talking, but which is only new terminology presumably to be able to talk about talking. To implement this terminology and to reach those who are still unfamiliar with it, behaviorist must be willing to talk first how people usually talk and then to introduce their new terminology. 

Our usual way of talking is NVB. Only if that is clear can we introduce SVB,  which would have been the behaviorist way of talking if behaviorists had paid attention to how Skinner sounded. It was assumed that someone who knows behaviorism knows how to talk about it, but that was a wrong assumption.