May 19, 2016

May 19, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I want to say more about the change which will occur in how we talk when we truly know that our behavior is not caused by some inner agent. This scientific knowledge makes us produce Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Those who haven’t acquired this knowledge inevitably produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). When behaviorists produce NVB this indicates they haven’t understood this essential fact about behavior.  As the SVB/NVB distinction hasn’t yet been addressed many behaviorists continue to produce NVB. The fact that they know it better than others how behavior works hasn’t led to acceptance, but to rejection. The change in how we talk, which occurs once we acknowledge that we are each other’s environment, has not yet occurred. This is the change from NVB to SVB. We keep having NVB as we don’t fully recognize the extent to which we negatively influence each other. If have the conversation in which we explore this bi-directional influence, we find we go back and forth between SVB and NVB all the time. Thus, our environment changes continuously and rapidly. SVB cannot endure if the contingency that makes it possible keeps changing. When we have the conversation in which we explore the contingency which makes SVB possible and the contingency which makes NVB possible, we know how often SVB and NVB alternate. They keep alternating as long as we aren’t 100% correct about what causes SVB or NVB. Once we know that, SVB can continue undisturbed and NVB will be a thing of the past. Once we know the difference between SVB and NVB, we understand, admit and feel that NVB is causing us all sorts of problems. SVB is the way of talking in which we are no longer troubled by an imaginary behavior-causing self. All our previous NVB talk about self, ego, personality, intelligence, consciousness and will power turns out to be completely irrelevant. In SVB we can at long last talk about the science of human behavior without getting side-tracked by our so-called uniqueness, our individual differences and our personal preferences, which of course simply refer to our phylogenetic, ontogenetic and cultural histories.