May 22, 2015

May 22, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Today’s writing is my fifth response to “Behaviorism and the Stages of Scientific Activity” by J. Moore (2010). Although I tried to contact him, Moore has never even responded to me. Yet, he is the one who wrote “Radical behaviorism is concerned about talk of mental causes and dimensions because such talk is a product of nonscientific influences (underlining added).”  

May be it was because I was explaining myself in terms of having ‘meditative interaction’ in my previous writings? However, Moore’s written concern “about talk” is not the same as my involvement with real talk. This reminds me of the colloquial distinction between SVB and NVB. In the former people talk with each other, but in the latter, people talk at each other. Stated differently, SVB is bi-directional and NVB is uni-directional. It amazes me how often behaviorist writing, supposedly in an attempt to prevent “reification”, contain references to things said without giving consideration for the fact that these written “words can neither literally create nor change the nature of the things talked about.”

 

Scholarly emphasis on writing rather than on talking is based on the false assumption that studying what is written will change the way in which we talk. Sadly, Skinner’s project of “redefining psychology” was mainly about writing. He lamented the fact that the science of behavior “inherited a language so infused with metaphor and implication that it was frequently impossible merely to talk about behavior without raising the ghosts of dead systems. Worst of all, it carried on the practice of seeking solution for the problems of behavior elsewhere that in the behavior itself.” Although he argued in favor of a science “in which behavior was taken as a subject matter in its own right, as Watson (1878/1958) had earlier envisioned it”, he didn’t seek, like I do, solutions for how we talk “in the behavior itself.” To the contrary, Skinner himself urged the behaviorist to seek the “solution for the problems elsewhere”, that is, in their writings. Later in his career, Skinner stated “As a philosophy of a science of behavior, behaviorism calls for probably the most drastic change ever in our way of thinking about man (underlining added).” He didn’t say‘talking'!

What are the “methods and instruments needed in the study of behavior?” Are we prevented from advancing more rapidly toward them, as Skinner believed, because of “the diverting preoccupation with a supposed or real inner life?” Is mentalism, as Moore believes, a half-baked “third-stage verbal product”, which hasn’t “gone through developmental verbal processes associated with the first two stages?” We can use our vocal verbal behavior as our method and we must use our eyes and ears as instruments. Our “diverting preoccupation with an inner life” is not kept alive by cognitive science, but by our overemphasis on writing and reading. If we would decide to investigate talking while we talk, there would be no room for an imaginary inner agent. It is because we haven’t talked that this inner agent is still there. Really talking means: being without an inner agent. This is not esoteric, but scientific. Certainly “cognitive psychology is a great hoax and a fraud”, but regardless of that, most interaction is based on belief in the inner causation of behavior, that is, most talking is NVB. 

As a teacher, but also as a facilitator of hundreds of seminars, that is, as an experimenter, I have found that “the validation of the experiment is the change in the behavior of the individual subject, guided by principle or instruction.” My focus has been and continues to be “manipulations necessary to confirm the law.” Although SVB has been confirmed over and over again, I never get tired of it. I am aligned with Bacon, who stated “to know a cause is have the ability to produce an effect.” I happily consider myself “homo faber”, a “making human” rather than “homo sapiens”, a “thinking human.” As evidenced by my students, the SVB/NVB distinction is “practical, productive knowledge – how to control, make and remake the world.” Moreover, I feel at home in the USA because my technological theory is aligned with American culture. I continue a lineage of passionate behavioral engineers, who are into scientifically doing something to change the world into a better place. 

By instructing people to listen to themselves while they speak, I bring them “under control of variables and relations that participate in an event.” By doing so, “participants may better formulate and refine principles that inform the prediction and control of behavioral events.” The event I am talking about here is talking. People learn to discriminate the two subsets of vocal verbal behavior and the conditions in which these behaviors occur.

As with all behaviorisms, SVB is an inductive practice. “The inductive leap from particulars to universals” begins with the speaker’s verbal behavior and then it generalizes to the listener’s response. When it is pointed out to a speaker that he or she sounds a certain way, that is, when the listener becomes the speaker and then tells the other speaker how he or she is experiencing this speaker and how he or she is feeling about him or her, this is often, quite conveniently, pushed aside as “irrelevant or ad hominem.” The difference between SVB and NVB is mostly avoided in actual conversation, because, as Schoenfeld (1969) correctly described  “what is not often pointed out [in deductively arrived postulates] is to say where the axioms or postulates come from in the first place.”  Moreover, “to argue that only the ultimate correctness of the postulates is of interest, is to deny that human behavior is involved.” The difference between SVB and NVB is not theoretical, as it is about a functional relationship that involves the speaker and the listener. Once we explore SVB and NVB, we can no longer hide behind our unscientific, favorite, mentalistic postulates. 

SVB and NVB are “behavioral processes” which “are uniform across time and place.” These subsets of vocal verbal behavior are on the continuum of behavior with other species; there is a nonverbal version of SVB and NVB in nonhumans. Since our phylogenetic development makes our ontogenetic development (SVB and NVB), possible, it is important to recognize the environmental variables which effect how we talk. Development of scientific theory is essentially not very different from our everyday pragmatic efforts to make sense of our world. Our theory of reality is only as good as the extent to which we accurately measure the results of our actions. As we research SVB, it will become apparent that “better outcomes of events”, better results in our conversation, depends not on specific third-stage statements, but on whether SVB was able to continue. The verbal instructions given by the speaker involve appetitive stimulation of the listener, who as a speaker maintains SVB, by reinforcing the other speaker. In conclusion, NVB is my way or the highway, but in SVB everyone can be a speaker, who is reinforced by the fact that he or she is listening to him or herself, but who is also being listened to by others. It is reciprocal reinforcement that makes SVB possible and keeps it going.