August 20, 2016

August 20, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-second response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). It should be clear from my distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is supported by and grounded in radical behaviorism, that environmental variables (not private events), cause us to talk the way we do. Think of these variables as people. 

In different environments people speak different languages; in France children learn how to speak French, but in China children learn how to speak Chinese. Similarly to these languages, SVB and NVB are simply patterns of behavior. “Many patterns of verbal behavior pass as successful explanation to many people, and indeed common practices of explanation provide an interesting area for empirical investigation.” 

My theory, which is directly observed by me as verbal behavior, that is, as speech occurring within my own skin, is only valuable to the extent that it can bring the reader’s attention to what made me describe the SVB/NVB distinction the way I did.  The reader will agree with me that my description of my public speech always either co-occurs with the positive or the negative emotions which are experienced privately. 

As we could only verify our emotional patterns of verbal behavior while we speak, it is important we acknowledge that in NVB we were not in the position to learn about them. The SVB/NVB distinction only makes sense if we talk about it and this writing is intended to stimulate that. 

As we engage in SVB, we will find that phenomenology, the study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness and radical behaviorism both focus on a first-person perspective. From a scientific third-person perspective we all talk from a first-person perspective!

“Any kind of professional language, no matter how esoteric, is of interest to the radical behaviorist as a sample of verbal behavior.” Once we engage in SVB, however, we will find that many so-called professional languages should from now on be categorized as NVB. 

Skinner referred to this as mentalism, but NVB is a much more pragmatic term as it focuses our attention directly on how we talk or on whether we even talk with each other at all. One thing is for sure: as long as the emphasis of psychological theory continues to be mainly on writing and on reading, we are talking and listening less and less. 

If we really want to know “what sort of factors have been involved in leading the speaker to say what he does,” we cannot avoid feeling the heaviness and tremendous burden which is involved in NVB and our  delight in SVB. However, factors that have been involved in how the speaker speaks determine how what the speaker says comes across.

The saying it-is-not-what-you-say-but-how-you-say-it is a listener’s perspective of the speaker. Likewise, the SVB/NVB distinction is a listener’s perspective, that is, a first-person perspective. A speaker’s perspective, on the other hand, is a third-person perspective. 

In SVB we will acknowledge that a first-person perspective gives rise to third-person perspective, but a third-person perspective by itself (as in NVB) is disembodied and excludes a first-person perspective. Thus, a lot of what has gone on in the name of science was NVB, a way of speaking which disregarded the listener’s subjective experience.

“How earnestly the radical behaviorist is prepared to try to understand whatever factors control the emission of any interesting psychological talk” will depend on whether he or she listens, not to somebody else, but to him or herself. Only in SVB the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. Only in SVB the speaker speaks with and listens to others in the exact same way as he or she speaks with and listens to him or herself. In NVB, the speaker speaks at, not with the listener.