March 10, 2016

March 10, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In his paper “Humble Behaviorism” (1991) Neuringer puts the horse behind the wagon: he argues that humility will make behaviorists more scientific. It hasn’t happened, and, most likely, it isn’t going to happen. The question should be: why it hasn’t happened? Why hasn’t science made behaviorists humble? It hasn’t happened as it couldn’t happen. The issue of humility doesn’t arise when we think of the contingencies that increase scientific behavior. The issue of humility only comes up as Neuringer, who most probably had nothing anymore to loose, finally began to take to note of the obvious fact that his own arrogance should be, of course, considered unscientific behavior. To the extent that the orderliness of data and the lawfulness of human behavior is not the real motivation, behavioral science continues to be convoluted by “personal characteristics of the behavioral scientist.” It should give us pause to ponder over the reasons why the journal “The Behavior Analyst” has published such an unoriginal and ridiculous article? One can only conclude that the editors, like Neuringer, must have thought it was pertinent to the behaviorist community “to motivate consideration of humility as one goal for behavioral researchers.” The question I like to ask is: how is “willingness to consider alternative views” or “openness to criticism” even accomplished if we never really talk about these matters? If Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) prevents this then we must stop it and replace it with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)!