June 8, 2015

June 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is my sixth response to “Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008).  I first want to finish my thoughts on Carr, who, like Skinner, was a real gentle man. I feel fortunate to have heard him and I write about him because I am inspired by him. Carr’s lecucture is a verbal episode in which we can hear lots of  Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) instances. I highly recommend everyone to listen to his lecture on You Tube. If you google this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kkocTdn0iY , you will be able to hear for yourself what a wonderful man he was.

 

His enthusiastic approach which rubbed off on his students made him write “Most people respond that my approach to behaviorism must be idiosyncratic, and that I am surely a prophet ahead of my time. Of course, I am not ahead of my time; instead, I am solidly in the mainstream of operant behaviorism.” Carr is absolutely unique among behaviorists in that he emphatically addresses bidirectional causality, specifically how it relates to our vocal verbal behavior.

Going back again to the paper on “Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism”, it should be clear to behaviorists that “Buddhists who retain the notion of free will” are mentalists. The statement that without free will “liberation from the life cycle is impossible” should make behaviorists laugh, but the authors go further to make their point and compare Buddhism with Christianity. In Christianity free will is also “necessary for individuals to choose to live in particular ways to achieve salvation.” After that they go on to claim that “free will in Buddhism and in behavior-analytic determinism have functional parallels.” It is unbelievable how far people will go in making it seem as if they are having SVB, while in fact they are engaging in NVB. This is typical holier-than-thou behavior.  

The behaviorist Chiesa (2003) writes “When situation or historical variables are implicated, it may be easier to be compassionate towards individuals who engage in behavior that may be considered bad than when the individual is, because of his assumed free will, responsible for his or her own behavior” (underlining added). In NVB we try to be compassionate, but only in SVB we truly are. There is no need for “increased compassion towards individuals who engage in undesirable behavior.” If we are to stop their undesirable behavior, we must know of what is this behavior a function. It is a function of unidirectional interaction, my way or the highway or NVB? 

The bidirectional causation of the behavior of both the speaker and the listener becomes clear when the speaker receives feedback from the listener, who is able to give this feedback, because he or she is allowed to become a speaker. The speaker is able to receive this feedback because he or she becomes a listener and is capable of being a listener to both the speaker who is different from the listener and the speaker who is the same person as the listener. 

A deterministic outlook doesn’t necessarily result in SVB.  Most likely it results in NVB, because it goes against what everyone believes. It is easy to see that radical behaviorism, which goes against what Buddhists,, Christians and even atheists believe, leads to an emphasis on words such as “deterministic” and “function”, while ignoring nonverbal, biological aspects of the interaction which play a much bigger role than our recently developed cognitive abilities

It gets even more esoteric when the deterministic functional account is claimed to be equivalent to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, “the idea that every moment is a moment of rebirth”. Although the Buddhist s deny the possibility of “the transmigration of the soul” it is presumably "possible for the individual to be changed into something other than its previous form.” Moreover, “this notion of reincarnation is foundational” in Buddhism.  It is important to reflect on the fact that a bunch of behaviorists wrote this paper to make behaviorism more attractive to New Agers. The process of trying to convince the reader is always essentially a sales process. SVB, however, is not a sales process and is not understood as long as people think that talking is about buying into a message or not buying into it.  In NVB we are only busy with whether we buy it or not, whether we are sold on a message or not,, or whether we are selling our message or not,. 

Similarly, Buddhists remain busy with a self or not.  And, a NVB way of talking also keeps behaviorists preoccupied with a self.It should be noted that the authors write “rather than speaking in mystical terms, the transitions to which it refers are happening in the life of the individual” (underlining added) . Indeed, they are not speaking and even if they were speaking it would sound the same. 

Surely, “an organism is changed when exposed to contingencies of reinforcement”, but the behavior of a New Agers or self-abdicating breath-watchers, is not going to be changed by behaviorist’s belief in the similarity between behaviorism and Buddhism. It is astounding these authors state "in a science of behavior, it may be sufficient to speak of order at the level of environment-behavior interaction and not appeal to other universes of discourse.”  (underlining added).  I remind the reader that the authors, are not speaking, but writing and the reader is not hearing anything, but is  only reading. Writing and reading appeal to “other universes of discourse” than speaking and listening. To confuse the two is to engage in NVB.   

We engage in SVB not because we are convinced, about it, but because it is possible. When it comes to death, of course, the organism stops behaving, but the environment with whom the organism interacted will continue without him or her, that is,, the environment will be changed due to his or her departure. Only the behavior of those who have survived the person can now be analyzed. It is completely wrong to conceive of Buddhism and behaviorism as “systems in which death may be conceptualized as a continuous state of change.” 

Central to radical behaviorism is the behavior of the organism which completely ends when the organism dies, while only the behavior of other organisms “who have shared an environment with the deceased” continuous in a changed form. Thus,, there is no “important behavior” of an “important person” (Buddha,  or Skinner)  which “continues in the collective works.” Only those who live can know, read, write or talk about and teach these works. There is neither a Skinner nor Buddha who lives on. The presumed notion of continuous change is an inaccurate depiction of death. To really talk about death is to have SVB, but to talk about so-called ongoing change is NVB. 

Also the notion that “cultural selection is the mechanism” by which “the essence of the originator…may be said to be preserved... albeit in modified form” (Glenn, 2003) (underlining added) distracts from the fact there is no originator and that nothing is said. If something is said it will only be by others than these presumed originators. They don’t “preserve in modified form” some other organism, but they are affected by papers, books, lectures or this blog, which is not the same as interacting with these persons when they were alive. 

We cannot be affected in our behavior by someone who is not there,, by an absence. The wish for something to be there which is not there, signifies our inability to change, which , as Glenn (2003)  has stated, may be due to cultural selection.  The Buddhist concept of “nirvana” , or the “escape from the life cycle and the suffering inherent therein”, is a failed attempt to cope with loss. Supposedly our higher self is not attached and doesn’t grieve. Fact remains, that we do grieve and we don’t “become another person after one in –and one out breath.”  Behaviorism hasn't been effective at all in the “removal of the construct of the self,” but SVB  makes it effortlessly possible.