June 12, 2015

June 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing will be my third response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. When I am reading a paper like this I am catching up with things from my past and my response is often my private speech which is triggered by these public words. Other behaviorists have also tried explain Zen from a behavior analytic point of view. According to Bass, however,, they all got it wrong as “Zen is “the outcome of Zen practices.” This kind of argument, that Zen is like this or like that, is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB disagreements are never properly addressed and cannot be dissolved . As long as NVB  continues there is no room for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

Papers like this are written to disagree and my  point is: why don’t we have an actual conversation in which we disagree, because that would speed things up. Obviously, when much disagreement is to be expressed no conversation will be possible. To have more conversation, not only must we focus on what we agree on, but also, we must stop limiting our conversation to what was written and read. Let’s say we do that, but we find disagreements again stop our conversation and make the conversation impossible. My suggestion is:, let’s talk about this in a slightly different way than we are used to. NVB  makes SVB impossible. NVB stops SVB. SVB is authentic talking in which we take turns as speaker and listener, but NVB is the pretension of talking, in which our roles as speakers and listeners are fixed.Once we understand that NVB will be much easier to stop. NVB has to be stopped for SVB to begin. If  our SVB can continue, we will eventually extinguish  NVB. 

Much writing, which is a function of NVB, will also come to an end when we engage in SVB. I claim that most of our talking is NVB and therefore most of our writing is unproductive and endlessly beating around the bush. If the conversation stops, it is very obvious,, but in writing the illusion is created that a conversation still continuous, but all that is going on is NVB. I want you to know thatBass’s writing is in support of NVB and not of SVB.  

We may start out with SVB , but we get stranded with NVB. This is very common. Bass actually talked with Skinner about this concern. He admits that he was nervously "struggling to find good answers for epistemological questions.” Many people have struggled like him. Skinner’s answer to his questions was: “I don’t care much for isms.” He said he didn’t care for any “dualism, epiphenomenalism, monism or materialism.” Take note of the fact Skinner here directed Bass’s attention to “verbal behavior of which philosophy is a subset.”  He didn’t speak to Bass like someone would do who is trying to calm someone down, to the contrary, he gave him an ultimatum: either we talk about verbal behavior or this conversation ends. Although, generally speaking, Skinner has more SVB repertoire than other behaviorists, in this, instance, he spoke not with ,but at Bass and thus expressed NVB.   


This example is significant because anyone can imagine being in Bass’s shoes. Skinner has a different status than Bass, just as a Zen master has a different status as a disciple. Bass’s puzzlement is about to get bigger as he writes “Digesting his remarks led me to the giddy epiphany that Verbal Behavior (1957) was the unified field theory of academe – Skinner’s analysis accomplished for human behavior what Einstein had sought for physics. And then came along Zen.” It seems to me that Bass perhaps, even unknowingly, was having questions about how his own experience, which (due to his involvement in Zen practice became confined to and limited by his Zen verbal behavior), could be better explained by behavior analysis.   Although he was nervous to speak with such an important person as Skinner, Bass was probably as open to receive instruction from him as he would be to Zen master. 

Bass thought he wanted to talk with Skinner about the relation between Zen and behavior analysis,, but what he really wanted to talk about was of course how his own experience could be explained by behavior analysis. However,, this focus on his own experience took the backseat over his knowledge about and indoctrination byZen. Bass wanted to talk with Skinner about his own experience, but because he didn’t know how to do that,, he talked in Zen jargon. It seems to me that way back, Skinner too wanted to talk about his own experience.

Skinner apparently wanted to talk about his own experience so strongly that it made him discovered how to do that. His ability to manipulate environmental variables, allowed him to express himself scientifically.  He would talk with Bass only in such a way that he could have his say. Thus, Skinner didn’t have SVB , but NVB, because he coerced Bass to adhere to his view. Bass on the other hand, tried to be true to his own experience, so he stuck to hisZen jargon and by doing so, he also maintained NVB. 


What is also easy to recognize in the relationship between Skinner and Bass that NVB is a function of hierarchical relationship. SVB, by contrast, would be the conversation in which Skinner is no longer predetermined by his radical behaviorism and Bass is no longer preoccupied with his Zen philosophy. Such a conversation is both possible and necessary, but it will only happen if we recognize how our knowledge can get in the way of our talking. 

When Bass writes that "Zen took me outside not just culture-bound distinctions,, but also distinctions themselves”, he refers to his Zen   experience, which doesn’t involve much talking. Only, if “everything you know is wrong”, a different way of talking, SVB is possible.

How else but with SVB are we going to “discover what grows in the estuary made by Zen and behavior analysis”? NVB  keep us stuck with “aboutism” about “Zen and behavior analysis.” Bass believes that "Mentalism is uniquely ill suited for dealing with Zen’s extreme’s parsimony”, but since the rates of NVB are about as high among Zen Buddhists as among behavioral analysts, I conclude that  mentalism is still very common in both groups. 

“To step back from agency accounts ” (Vargas, 1996) and explanations “that appeal to events taking place somewhere else, at some other level of observation, described in different terms” (Skinner,, 1950) is not, as Bass seens to believe, “a step toward Zen”, but a step toward a new way of talking: SVB. Skinner’s words refer to the often overlooked fact that what is written and what is read cannot “appeal to events taking place somewhere else at another level of observation, described in different terms,” that is, to what is said and listened to.  Spoken words are not the same as our written words.  

It is so easy to gloss over the troublesome fact that for some strange reason written words have become more important than spoken words. We read that “Behavior analysis and Zen preserve no subject-object distinction”, but it is individual people who preserve such distinctions and who in one way or another, verbally or non-verbally act accordingly. Behavior analysts think they agree when they read “When contingencies are the units of analysis, the individual is part of an interactive context,” but only in SVB, can they actually experience each other “as part of an interactive context.”  It is interesting that Bass uses the word “individual “and doesn’t specify “interactive context” as being another human individual.  The statement would then read: “When contingencies are the units of analysis the individual is part of another individual.”  The latter is SVB, but the former is NVB. In NVB  the speaker and the listener are separated and the listener is treated by the speaker as a a thing. If “the interactive context” is not  another person, the speaker is talking at the listener who is either above and very important or below and completely irrelevant. Only in SVB do we come off of our theoretical high horse and do we rise out of our ignorance.