September 18, 2015

September 18, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

The following writing is my thirteenth response to “Some Relations Between Culture, Ethics and Technology in B.F. Skinner” by Melo, Castro & de Rose (2015). Skinner tentatively states that “An educated man is perhaps better able to adapt himself to his environment or adjust to the social life of his group, and a culture which emphasizes education is probably more likely to survive. . .” Behaviorist education without Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is not going to cut it. If survival of the culture is the goal, SVB is a must. However, he didn’t and couldn’t have formulated it, because there was no empirical evidence to back it up. I have given hundreds of seminars in which SVB was achieved by all the participants. In each seminar the participants from all walks of life agreed when someone was having SVB or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In spite of our conditioning, we can still recognize our SVB by listening to ourselves while we speak. This allows us to join speaking and listening behavior, which in NVB happen at a different rate.

“According to Skinner (1968), the behavior of the entire system

influences educational policy.” The “entire system” is maintained by NVB. The “global and local problems” different cultures have yet to face can be summarized as the ubiquity of NVB. The “cultural practices to solve these problems” must be defined as forms of SVB. “Techniques that promote development of SVB” are simple, easily obtainable and without any costs. SVB has to be understood as the new way of talking in which we co-regulate instead of dis-regulate each other. “Skinner (1953/1965) claimed that science can accelerate the practice of changing practices. He asserted that science can make remote consequences of behavior effective. He, as well as many behavior analysts, stressed the urgent need that science and technology speed up the design of practices with positive survival value.” Did it happen?

It didn’t and couldn’t happen as neither Skinner, nor other behaviorists proposed we should aim to change the way in which we talk. Our high rate of NVB and our low rates of SVB prevents the “practice of changing practices.” Stated squarely, NVB is a coarse-grained behavior, which simply lacks the precision that is needed to be specific and scientific.

Denying “the ontological distinction between values and facts” is great in theory, but unless we adhere to this while we interact with each other, it will not become part of our reality. It has not become part of our relationships as we didn’t yet address the importance of how we talk with each other. We keep addressing what we say, but how we talk with each other determines whether what we say makes any sense. In NVB our senses are not stimulated in the same way as in SVB. When we know about the SVB/NVB we will agree that NVB made us senseless.

“The main value prescribed by Skinner is the good of the culture, that

should be in balance with the welfare of individuals in a well-designed culture.” But, how do we talk with each other in such a culture? It can’t be our usual way of talking. Our way of talking needs to change if any of this is to become reality. Not a word about that in this paper. It appears as if this balance is going to come about just by itself. “As Richelle (1993/2003) points out, “Individual happiness converges here with the future of the species: education, as concerned with the future of society, should aim at preserving diversity, which is recognized as an essential factor in survival, in a Darwinian sense” (p. 175). Emphasis on education is in the right direction, but is not addressing the talking that is needed to teach this. In my talks with behaviorists, I have found they are not tolerant of diversity. Their NVB focus is only on what they say and how they say it doesn’t seem to matter. In this way behaviorists are just like everyone else. Those knowledgeable about the science of human behavior should be leading the way, as Skinner did, with SVB.   

If there is anything important people who don’t have developmental disabilities should learn from “the education and treatment of children with developmental disabilities” it is that such education requires a different way of speaking than the way of speaking we are all familiar with. What works for the developmentally disabled also works for us.

“It is doubtful, however, that behavioral technology has developed sufficiently enough to support the design of a whole society, as advocated by Skinner, especially in his early works.” I agree and I feel like the authors that this reference to Skinner’s earlier works holds the key. Although “whole schools have been designed based on behavioral technology, with promising results”, such experiments simply aren’t comprehensive enough to the much-needed “designing the education of a whole culture.” A topic of broader reach needs to be addressed.

The authors reason that “applying a behavioral technology to a whole society would still raise the questions of who would set the goals, who would make decisions, and how?” This question will be answered by SVB. I hope I am able to talk with them. If people have the choice between SVB and NVB, they will choose SVB all the time. Currently, they have no choice as nobody has ever pointed out the SVB/NVB distinction. The behavioral technology will only be working to “make individuals free” if it is taught with SVB, but as long as it is taught with NVB it will only “benefit those in charge of controlling agencies.”

Let’s make no mistake, the NVB speaker only uses the listener as a means to his or her ends. A NVB speaker is not the least interested in bi-directional communication with the listener, which dissolves the hierarchical relationships which are phylogenetically determined. Only a SVB speaker is fully verbal because he or she invites the listener to speak and allows him or her to listen to him or herself. SVB behavioral technology “is not devoid of values.” SVB is “not ethically neutral” as it is always against NVB. Within every culture there is a battle between SVB and NVB. In every culture there is more NVB than SVB. The reason this is so is because we don’t know how to have more SVB. If we have a choice, we would choose SVB, but we don’t yet have that choice. That choice will only be ours if we become more familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction. This writing cannot make us familiar with that distinction. No writings or readings could have affected the way in which we talk with each other, because talking and listening behavior is maintained by other independent variables than reading and writing behavior.