October 6, 2015

October 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my tenth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). I am, of course, in agreement with these authors behaviorist’ premise: “We believe that we are justified in considering covert events

. . . in our interpretation of complex behavior provided that we do not introduce ad hoc principles that are not founded in the experimental

analysis of overt, measurable, quantifiable behavior. . . . Inferences about covert events should follow from behavioral laws, not serve to

mask their inadequacy. (LCB, pp. 275–277).” As I have stated, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) covert speech is a function of SVB public speech. Likewise, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) private speech is a function of NVB public speech. It can’t be otherwise; what we say to ourselves is determined by how we have talked with others. If others talk at us, we will be talking at ourselves, but if others are talking with us, we will we be talking with ourselves. In talking at each other and at ourselves there is always a separation between the speaker and the listener, but in talking with each other and talking with ourselves the speaker and the listener are experienced as one. Like these authors, I am also not much interested in “ad hoc principles that are not founded in the experimental analysis of overt, measurable, quantifiable behavior.”

The listener’s auditory distinction between the speaker’s public speech, SVB or NVB is not an inference of the listener’s covert event, but is based on the lawfulness of overt behavioral laws. However, it should be clear to the reader that these verbal response classes are quantifiable only by means of conversation and cannot be measured while we are only involved in reading and writing. Analysis of SVB and NVB makes no sense in written form. Our demand for this written form represents our bias toward visual stimuli. These words and sentences are visible, but they have no sound. 

The authors mention “four reasons for integrating the experimental analysis of behavior and neuroscience”, and insist “that distinctions

between different levels of analysis—or, better perhaps, different scales of measurement (Philip Hineline, personal communication)—are epistemological, not ontological. That is, the distinction is between

different ways of studying the same nature, not different natures.” Yet, they don’t consider talking as one of those “different ways of studying the same nature.” Their NVB way of talking doesn’t permit it and they have no idea that another way of talking, SVB, would. Not surprisingly, they remain busy with “observations at finer levels of analysis, whether microbehavioral or neural” (underlining added by me). Even at these neuroscientific “finer levels of analysis” their visual bias continues, but in real conversation (SVB) “finer levels of analysis” involves listening.

These scholars worry about “Some antecedent–behavior relations” that seem to “exemplify nonlinearly separable functions—such as the XOR problem in artificial intelligence (viz., Hutchison)—that require the introduction of mediating events if ad hoc formulations are to be avoided”, but they don’t mention anything about the affect-inducing speaker. Moreover, since the listener, who, as we all know, mediates the speaker, is either positively or negatively affected by the speaker’s voice and in principle can talk about that, since the speaker-as-own-listener bridges the environment within and outside of the skin, there is really no reason for the “introduction of mediating events.” If these authors are “motivated by a simple curiosity about the processes underlying the functional relations between the environment and behavior’’, why don’t they acknowledge the simple fact that they, like everyone else who learned a language, are affected by auditory stimuli?

In NVB the speaker is not aware of how he or she sounds while he or she speaks. Consequently, he or she forces others to listen to him or her. In SVB, the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks.  Thus, in SVB, the speaker is not aversively stimulating the listener. The listener, who can be the speaker, listens effortlessly to the SVB speaker. 

Although Skinner wrote Verbal Behavior (1957), he also remained unaware of the SVB/NVB distinction and gave priority to visual stimuli. Had he known this distinction, he would never made the statement: “The physiologist of the future will tell us all that can be known about what is happening inside the behaving organism. His account will be an important advance over a behavioral analysis, because the latter is necessarily ‘‘historical’’— that is to say, it is confined to functional relations showing temporal gaps. . . .What he discovers cannot invalidate the laws of a science of behavior, but it will make the picture of human action more nearly complete (Skinner, 1974, pp. 236–237).” To “tell us all that can be known about what is happening inside” the physiologist would still have to achieve SVB, but as long as he or she engages in NVB, he or she will be biased. Remarkably, Skinner considers behavioral analysis as “necessarily historical – that is to say, it is confined to functional relations showing temporal gaps.” Anyone who has explored SVB knows that such a statement derives from NVB. The functional relations that bring forth SVB can immediately be explored, verified and agreed upon, by talking.  In SVB the speaker’s immediate positive impact on the listener is tangible and the speaker and the listener are conscious. In NVB, by contrast, there is no way in which the impact of the speaker on the listener can be addressed. Therefore, in SVB these “temporal gaps” don’t even occur.  I disagree with Skinner that the physiologist’s account “will make the picture of human action more nearly complete” (underlining added by me). There is no picture or puzzle to be completed, but there is definitely a way of talking in which we don’t listen as what we say is presumably more important than how we say it. Only if NVB is recognized as such can it be stopped. When NVB is stopped we will have SVB. It is necessary for NVB to be addressed first, before we can have SVB. Therefore, the speaker’s voice in NVB is called Voice 1 and the speaker’s voice in SVB is called Voice 2.  “Temporal gaps” in the behavioral account of human interaction come down to missing frequencies in the production as well as the reception of sound. Sounds which we don’t produce, we also don’t tend to hear.