November
5, 2015
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S.
Verbal Engineer
Dear
Students,
Today I respond
a second time to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by
Tourinho and Neno (2003). I comment as this paper links the continuation of
ideas, which go from James to Skinner, to Tourinho, to me and, hopefully, to
you. I should also mention Ernst Mach, who inspired Skinner’s “rejection of the
empiricist criterion of agreement based on public observation” and Sam Leighland, who commented in 1999 “it is clear that Skinner’s views on the
goals of science, as well as his general view of truth, could be described as
strongly pragmatic in character” (p. 483). I add these authors, as I am equally
inspired by and grateful to them for their work. G.E. Zuriff deserves to be
mentioned too as he linked James views on pragmatism to Skinner’s work. Although
he said “pragmatic theory of truth” is “consistent with and characteristic of
Skinner’s system”, he even reinterpreted James’s work by adding that “a theory
more prominent in [James’s] work and more congruent with his philosophy of
science is, in essence, a behaviorist version of pragmatic theory of truth.”
Skinner’s work is
superior to that of James as he derived “a particular notion of “explanation”
from Mach: functional relationships, applied in his scientific project to the
study of the organism’s interaction with the world around it.” You will notice
that the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal
Behavior (NVB) is about how human organisms interact with other organisms,
their environments.
SVB and NVB are related to people who set the stage for one or the other. Another important
point elaborated on by those who studied Skinner’s pragmatism was the notion of “knowledge as behavior.” Skinner wrote in 1968 that “to impart
knowledge is to bring behavior of a given topography under control of given
variables.” The word “topography” deals with what behavior looks like. It is
easy to go wrong with describing operationally what behavior looks like. For
instance, we are inclined to describe a child as defiant, when he or she is not
doing as he or she is told. The latter is a better, topographical description
as instances in which he or she is doing what he or she is told can be
measured. It is easy to get carried away by words like ‘defiance’, which don’t
stimulate us to calmly measure what is actually taking place and to learn more
about the kind of verbal, but also vocal, instructions which stimulate the
child to do or not do what it is told.
Defining the
topography of SVB and NVB is essential for experiencing and understanding this
distinction. I mention experiencing first, since understanding is meaningless
without experiencing it. Once you have experienced what SVB is, you understand
it. If you don’t understand it, this is because you didn’t experience it. We
are wasting time by trying to understand each other as we are no longer experiencing
each other. And, how are we to experience each other, if we don’t even
experience ourselves? Certain conditions must be met before we can understand
each other. Once these conditions are met, understanding will happen. When
circumstances are such that understanding can happen, it will happen. We are
talking about what and how we are talking. Our verbal behavior
not only looks a particular way, it also sounds a particular way. How verbal
behavior looks is more apparent in written than in spoken language. We can’t
see words while we speak, but we can hear them.
The topography of our
spoken words – which are produced by the air we breathe-out from our lungs and
sets our vocal cords in motion – has to be defined as our sound, which is
shaped by our tongue and our lips. Defining the topography of verbal behavior
that is used by presumably healthy people is as important as defining the
topography of those who suffer from behavioral disabilities, such as autism.
With the latter, we are more inclined to do a better job at defining the
topography as we will otherwise not make any progress in treatment of this
disorder.
As our everyday interaction
is not widely considered to be a problem and as we have all sorts of ways of
down-playing this problem, we are not paying attention to how we sound while we
speak. If we did, we would find that not
listening to our own sound while we speak makes us overly concerned with the topography
of others, outward-oriented. However, in SVB, in which we listen to ourselves while we speak,
we realize once and for all that the speaker-as-own-listener includes the listener-other-than-the-speaker,
while, in NVB, our usual focus on the listener-other-than-the-speaker excludes the speaker-as-own-listener.
During NVB, we coerce
others into listening to us or we put a whole lot of effort into trying to listen
to others, but our focus is always outward, on others and not on ourselves. In
SVB, by contrast, the speaker’s focus is on his or her own sound, that is, on
him or herself. All problems of interaction can be solved in this manner. As
long as communicators are carried away by their own words, outward-oriented and
struggling to get each other’s attention, our communication problems will not
and cannot be solved. As long as we sound aversive to each other, we are not talking
with each other. As we judge each other and call each other names, we don’t pay
attention to how we sound while we do this. Only if we sound better can we overcome
our communication problems.
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