February 1, 2016

February 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 108), in Chapter 6 about Values, Skinner writes “A fact is no doubt different from what a person feels about it, but the latter is a fact also.” However, acknowledgment of the latter is more difficult as it deals with how we talk about our feelings. Although Skinner states “What causes trouble here as elsewhere, is the appeal to what people feel,” he doesn’t explain that verbal behavior regarding our feelings is often inaccurate due to Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which occurs due to the presence of aversive stimuli. 

Only during Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which we feel safe and supported, can we become accurate in our verbal descriptions about what we feel. Indeed, “conditions of the body are much more important.” And, “to make a value judgement by calling something good or bad is to classify it in terms of its reinforcing effects.” Thus, to make a value statement is really to describe the condition of our body. 

Skinner states that the “person who is teaching a child to distinguish among his feelings is like a color-blind person teaching a child to name colors. The teacher cannot be sure about the presence or absence of the condition which determines whether a response is to be reinforced or not.” It would be more accurate to say that such a teacher is more or less tone-deaf; unless he listens to himself while he speaks, he cannot hear what the speaker-as-own-listener is hearing. The color-blind metaphor is not working. “The language of emotion is not precise” as long as we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak and inadvertently engage in NVB.  Surely, “We describe our emotions with terms which have been learned in connection with other kinds of things, almost all the words we use were originally metaphors.” However, we need to discriminate the two universal response classes: SVB and NVB.