August 4, 2016

August 4, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). Day never said this, but the following sentence could easily be interpreted to mean that he was referring to the two universal response classes, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). “It is as if in verbalizing our knowledge of things we always have to express an identification of one or another aspect of the permanent structure of nature.” 

We express one or the other. Confusingly, we often go back and forth between SVB and NVB. We couldn’t continue only with SVB, as mankind hasn’t yet recognized this distinction scientifically. Even though it is clear to those who learn about the SVB/NVB distinction this would be beneficial, it doesn’t and couldn’t happen, as there is, as of yet, nobody except me to make it happen. My students and mental health clients experience results that are proportionate to how often they have been exposed to and are now familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction.

At this time, they are the only ones who are benefitted by it. I feel fortunate with my job as a psychology instructor and therapist as this provides me with the best opportunity to effect the lives of as many people as possible. However, I can imagine a much broader reach than I currently have and I am always working towards achieving this. 

Increase of SVB and decrease of NVB or the decrease of SVB and the  increase of NVB is based on “identification of one or another aspect of the permanent structure of nature.” However, expressions as ‘he gave me his word’, ‘his words weighed heavy on her’, are ‘not set in stone.’ 

“The radical behaviorist is aware that we may attribute thing-ness to events largely because we are accustomed to speak of the world about us as composed of objects which are felt to possess an inherent constancy or stability.” Willard Day choses his words well as he writes that the radical behaviorist “is led to a position which is peculiarly anti-ontological” as “he is reluctant to take for granted that all useful knowledge must be conceptualized in terms of verbal patterns of thought derived simply from our experience with material objects.”  

It is important to recognize it is NOT the listeners, but the speakers who are the ones to “conceptualize.” However, SVB and NVB are two “verbal patterns of thought” which are “derived simply from our”, the listener’s,  “experience with material objects.” SVB and NVB are based on the listener’s experience of the sound of the speaker’s voice. 

By putting s him or herself in the shoes of the listener, the radical behaviorist becomes “anti-ontological” and “reluctant to take for granted that all useful knowledge must be derived simply from our experience with material objects,” As anyone who knows about the distinction between SVB and NVB will acknowledge, “useful knowledge” can only be “derived” from SVB as SVB is more useful than NVB. 

In NVB, “our experience with material objects” is such that the listener feels the speaker’s voice as coercive and demanding. It is fascinating to carefully read Day who wrote that “in particular” the radical behaviorist “objects to speaking of the events associated in a functional relationship as if they were things or objects having a more or less permanent identity as real elements in nature.” I want readers to think about that word speaking, as it seems to refer here to NVB.

The listener experiences and doesn’t like a speaker’s way of speaking, as he or she treated as if he or she was only a prop, an object for the speaker. In NVB, the speaker doesn’t care about the listener and treats him or her as a thing. In NVB the speaker is presumably more powerful than the listener and is allowed to dominate him or her.

It is the listener, who is more sensitive than the speaker, who “objects to speaking of the events associated in a functional relationship as if they were things or objects having a more or less permanent identity as real elements in nature.” In NVB, the speaker, who is the king, the boss, the slave-driver, the leader, the authority, lets the listener know that he or she is in control. In NVB the speaker dominates the listener. 

The listener’s objection to being dominated by the speaker is not only because the listener is treated as a means to the speaker’s end, but also because he or she knows that the speaker’s claim to a “more or less permanent identity” is only pretention. The falsehood perpetuated by NVB is that speakers and listeners are “real elements in nature.”

In SVB it is quite evident that each person is a speaker as well as a listener, also those who in NVB are doing all the speaking. The NVB speaker is often accused by the listener of NOT listening, but this doesn’t mean that the NVB speaker is incapable of listening. He or she is capable of listening, but only in circumstances which stimulate him or her to do that. As long as he or she is able to be in circumstances that stimulate him or her to be a NVB speaker, he or she will NOT listen. 

Day seems to imply this when he writes that the radical behaviorist “does not believe that the functional relations he describes constitute an identification of anything which might be called true laws of nature, in the sense that the systematic collection of such functional relations can ultimately be expected to fit together into a completed picture of an account of human interaction with the environment.”

NVB keeps the falsehood alive that there are “true laws of nature” which determine who does all the speaking and who presumably is only to do as he or she is told. Moreover, “human interaction with the environment” must be understood as interaction between one human being and another. We are each other’s environment; we affect each other and we are affected by each other. This bi-directional influence can be explored only during SVB due to turn-taking between the speaker and the listener. In NVB, there is no turn-taking. 

In uni-directional NVB the speaker speaks AT, not WITH the listener, but only in SVB we find “the systematic collection of such functional relations can ultimately be expected to fit together into a completed picture of an account of human interaction with the environment.”