August 21, 2016

August 21, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-third response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). As long as we keep having Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) it is impossible to understand ourselves and each other. All our problems are problems of relationship, created and maintained by how we talk with each other. 

Day says “to know thoroughly what has caused a man to say something is to understand the significance of what he has said in its very deepest sense.” I agree, but I insist that such understanding must occur while we talk. Moreover, NVB never brought about such an understanding. If such understanding ever occurred, it didn’t occur very often as it was always because of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

Human relationship remains a mess unless we address how we talk with each other. Many people have thought we must engage in conversation to begin to address and solve our problems, but our conversation didn’t and couldn’t help as it was NVB. As long as the distinction between SVB and NVB is not clear, we have NVB, even with the best of intentions. 

“It is true that Skinner has not rushed to embrace with star-eyed enthusiasm the sentimental, emotional, commonsensical, or obscure outpourings that often pass as pleas for phenomenology in psychology.” 

According to Day, Skinner had “his own row to hoe in attempting to advance an explicit interest in the analysis of behavioral control,” but in my opinion, although didn’t talk about the SVB/NVB distinction, he basically refused to engage in NVB as he preferred to have SVB. 

SVB is radical behaviorism’s natural outcome. Without it we are unable to talk about how we are actually affected by each other and how we are affecting each other. NVB only allows superficial conversation. 

Skinner was well aware of the “professional shallowness in the interpretation of his work.” Radical behaviorism’s emphasis on behavioral control has been criticized from day one by those who are in power and who can continue to maintain their power by means of NVB. 

Ultimately, as Skinner described in Walden Two (1948), there is only going to be a more peaceful, happy society if we change our way of talking. Walden Two describes the change from NVB to SVB. 

People echo the presumed “intolerance” of Skinner’s views on verbal behavior. “A specialization of interest does not imply intolerance, nor is intolerance implied by a decreasing interest in verbal behavior as its control by observable events becomes more hopelessly obscure.” 

There is a reason why control by observable events over NVB and SVB continued to become obscure: once we make these events observable, once we listen to the sound of the speaker’s voice and discriminate between SVB and NVB, we are going to have less NVB and more SVB. 

“The radical behaviorist understandably reacts slowly to phenomenological talk that is to some extent too distantly removed from the direct observations that have made the speaker excited to begin with.” 

Day refers to an “excited speaker”, which I translate as someone with SVB, whose enthusiasm is dampened by radical behaviorist talk, which is “too distantly removed from the direct observations that have made the speaker excited to begin with.” 

Day describes how the passionate phenomenologist’s SVB is stopped and dismissed by the “too distantly removed” NVB of the radical behaviorist. He writes in response to the Rice Symposium in 1969, but not much has changed since. Theoretical discussions are bound to be about what we say and not about how we say it.