August 15, 2016

August 15, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my seventeenth response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). Many things Day talks about resonate with my discovery and investigation of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

I am the radical behaviorist that he is writing about, who is “likely to feel that the most effective means of acquiring knowledge about some aspect of behavior is the attempt to learn how to shape up that very behavior in which he is interested.”

Also Skinner speaks to me as he states “it is possible that we shall fully understand the nature of knowledge only after having solved the practical problems of imparting it” (1969, p. 392) (italics added). 

I am able to fully understand the nature of SVB as I have imparted it. My teaching doesn’t depend on this writing. I have solved the problems of imparting SVB and know my understanding derives from my teaching.

I think it is IMPOSSIBLE “that we shall fully understand the nature of knowledge” as long as we haven’t “solved the practical problems of imparting it.” Unless we are going to teach the SVB/NVB distinction, that is, unless we learn how to condition decreased rates of NVB and increased rates of SVB, we will not have attained a full understanding about how we interact with one another. I mean this very seriously!!!

Stated differently, how we interact every day, which is mainly NVB and only for a small portion SVB, demonstrates we don’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction. Solving the practical problems of imparting the SVB/NVB distinction is a challenge mankind still has to wake up to. 

The radical behaviorist “holds the view that all verbal behavior, no matter how private its subject matter may appear to be, is to some significant extent controlled by the environment.” I invite everyone.

Once people have learned to discriminate between SVB and NVB it is easy for them to understand and accept what they sub-vocally say or think to themselves is the same as how others have talked with them. 

Behavior is lawful and predictable: we have SVB private speech to the extent that we were involved in SVB public speech and we have NVB private speech in proportion to our exposure to NVB public speech. 

All our so-called mental illnesses have their origins in the separation of our private speech from our public speech, which occurs during NVB. To recover from the afflictions which are caused by the separation of the speaker and the listener, clients must be taught by behavioral engineers that public speech and private speech are one only in SVB.

During NVB it is impossible to trace private speech to the environment from which it originated. Radical behaviorists must engage in SVB to know “that the range of phenomena related to human verbal functioning varies from the most intimately personal to the most spectacular social” and to see “that all meaningful language is shaped into effective form by the action of an environmental verbal community.” 

It is not merely “contact of language with the environment that enables us to respond effectively”, but our involvement in SVB that teaches us how we affect each other as speakers and listeners. 

The “common environmental contingency” that “controls both our own behavior and that of the speaker whose talk is of interest to us” is a listener-friendly contingency, for if it wasn’t, the talking would be of NO “interest to us”. Note that Day talks from a listener-perspective.

“To be sure, it is only rarely possible for us to perceive directly the relevant environmental variables as they operate to shape the verbal behavior with which it is concerned.” No doubt, he stated “it is only rarely possible” as he experienced only moments in which he had SVB.