July 31, 2016

July 31, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my another response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). For a long time I refused to write about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), because I felt we needed to talk about it.  As I didn’t yet know how SVB scientifically worked, talking about it often caused all sorts of problems. I felt rejected and misunderstood. 

As a consequence, I began to have this strong urge talk out loud with myself. This urge had not always been there, but it arose after I had discovered SVB. Many of these talks were recorded on audio tape and I have listened to them and enjoyed them for years.

As I became more successful in sharing my SVB with others, my urge to talk out loud with myself decreased. I seldom listen to my old audio recordings, but I still have them in a few boxes in my garage. Instead of talking out loud with myself, I now write in response to behaviorist authors. I never thought I would enjoy writing about SVB so much. At this point, writing about it is even more enjoyable than talking about it.

I have talked about it and I know what that is like, but writing about it is still relatively new to me. Of course, I could write about SVB without responding to anybody else, but I feel that I have done that already and I no longer feel that urge. I have learned a great deal from writing responses to behaviorist authors.   

Radical behaviorism helps me to explain SVB in writing. It doesn’t matter that I am responding to papers from forty years ago. I think that Day and Skinner were trying to have and continue SVB and unknowingly they often achieved it. SVB isn’t anything new, we have had it many times, but we were not having it consciously, deliberately and skillfully. This is now finally possible.

Willard Day first identifies “basic dimensions of radical behaviorism” and then he explains how it can be reconciled with phenomenology. It is basically because people refuse to study the work of B.F. Skinner that they interpret his objection against mentalism as if he is denying the fact that individuals have private experiences.   

What Skinner objected to was the belief that behavior is caused by phenomena existing within a dimension inside of a person. He was against our belief in psychic, spiritual, cognitive or spiritual dimensions as these don’t explain our behavior. Behavior can only be explained by identifying the functional relations between behavior and environmental conditions. 

It makes absolutely no sense to use internal processes or covert behavior to explain overt behavior. For instance, it doesn’t explain anything to say that we are running away because of fear. Thoughts and feelings are themselves behaviors that must be explained by environmental variables. However, our fear of dogs is explained if we have been bitten by a dog in the past. Day mentions Skinner’s objection against mentalism, but he isn’t addressing the overlooked fact that mentalism is of course maintained by a way of talking which I call NVB.

In NVB all communicators adhere to the mentalistic fiction that a behavior-controlling inner agent causes us to behave the way we do. Stated differently, NVB is the way of talking in which we maintain false explanations about why we behave the way we do. Obviously, during such communication we do not accurate describe how we are actually affected by each other or how we actually affect each other. 

We acquire a veridical account of our interaction when we have SVB. Neither Day nor Skinner was aware about the SVB/NVB distinction. Those who are aware of this distinction see no need to rail against mentalism, as they find it more important to reduce NVB and increase SVB.  Let’s make no bones about this: Radical behaviorism’s argument against mentalism has had the opposite effect; it increased NVB and decreased SVB. This is why radical behaviorism is so widely rejected.