June 5, 2015

June 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is the third part of my response to "Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts" by Diller and Lattal (2008).  As any behaviorist should know, there is no “right understanding, right thought,, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right  effort, right mindfulness, right concentration”, it all depends on what is being reinforced. If acting like a slave, a drug addict, a criminal, or a gang member is reinforced the response rate of that behavior will increase. Right or wrong are values which are reinforced or punished. If listening to ourselves while we speak is considered wrong and is punished, chances that many people will be listening to themselves while they speak will be small. It is for this reason that hardly anyone listens to themselves while they speak. We achieve Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in situations in which we are reinforced for listening to ourselves while we speak.  

In circumstances in which we are not reinforced for listening to ourselves while we speak, we produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  In other words, when we are not allowed to listen to ourselves, while we speak, we lose our natural sound and we speak with an unnatural sound, which to others is an aversive stimulus. 

Our natural, voice, by contrast, is an appetitive stimulus. This is not difficult to understand. In fact, it is so simple that we don’t realize it. Yet, it makes an enormous difference whether we talk with a natural sound, which is obviously the sound which we have when we are at ease and when we are feeling safe, confident , supported, listened to, understood, validated and positively reinforced, or whether we talk with a voice which expresses our anger, fear, stress, anxiety, distrust, arrogance, forcefulness and negative emotions. We are so used to NVB that we accept it as normal, while in fact most of our conversations are a function of negative emotions. As long as we don’t acknowledge that NVB prevents SVB, we are satisfied with our minimal instances of SVB, which,, because we are so used to NVB, is seen as a problem instead of as a solution. 

The whole issue of “attachment “, which,, according to Buddhists, causes “suffering”, doesn’t  arise in behaviorism. There is no self to get rid of, there never was a self and there is no attachment, other than the attachment that is reinforced. Likewise, there is no need for “reflection” or “seeking” and no “suffering” to get rid of. These are Buddhist or non-scientific fabrications. “Improving the human condition” can only be done reliably with the science of human behavior, that is, with its latest extension,SVB. We need to have a different way of talking and our old way of talking, NVB, needs to be stopped completely. This may sound fanatical,, but just as water boils at 100 degrees Celcius,,SVB can only happen in absence of NVB. 

We are going to create the situation in which SVB can and will happen or we don’t. Obviously, we will not be able to built the SVB situation if we don’t acknowledge that there is SVB and that NVB is happening while we could be having SVB.  

This writing is meant to put SVB on the map or it should irritate the readers that they are constantly engaged in NVB. The “technology of behavior,” which, according to Skinner was needed “to prevent the catastrophe towards which the world seems to be inexorably moving” is SVB,, a novel way of talking. By insisting that behavioral technology was required he was implying that all our past so-called solutions, such as Buddhism, don’t work and are a total waste of time. His radical behaviorism rejected any idea of agency, including some Buddhist Eightfold Path which supposedly would “improve a person’s individual life.” Bluntly stated :Buddhism doesn’t care about the human condition,, because it lacks the specificity of schedules of reinforcement. Furthermore, Buddhism of course, presents “a case for a self” albeit  “not in a colloquial sense”, but in a spiritual sense. For Buddhism the self is not “defined contextually” ,but mystically and karmically. 

For behaviorists there is no “true state of reality emptiness or the absence of intrinsic existence” or whatever that means. For those behaviorists who have learned about SVB, there is the hopeful understanding that a novel way of talking is absolutely possible. 

Supposedly, the Buddhist’s “true self” is conceptualized as “the person in the relationship.” The authors refer to how we talk about the self by stating “when examining the self then, it is only possible to talk about the self in relation to everything else that is occurring or that has occurred” (underlining added). However, I think this is purely theoretical. Only when a person listens to him or herself while her or she speaks, can this person say anything meaningful about how his or her experience is related to what is occurring or has occurred. If listening and speaking are not joined and are not happening simultaneously, this person will have NVB because he or she separates the speaker from the listener. It is ludicrous that in enlightenment “all concepts lose value.” During SVB , which is not enlightenment, which is a better way of talking, all concepts,, all words,, all content, what we say, is meaningful, because of how we say it. Moreover in SVB, there is correspondence between our verbal and nonverbal behavior, that is, our verbal and our nonverbal behavior are aligned. Our verbal expressions will become more clear as we become more attuned to our nonverbal  experiences.