March 22, 2014

March 22, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Consciousness and unconsciousness are extended patterns of verbal behavior  stimulated by our environment. When contingencies for consciousness are present, we find ourselves in very different environments as when they are absent. In the former, we feel safe, supported, bonded, but in the latter, we feel threatened, isolated and disconnected. Our individual pattern of verbal behavior either contains or doesn’t contain stimuli that set the stage for our first-person ontology of consciousness. And, if our repertoire contains it, we are capable of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but if it doesn’t, our way of talking only produces stimuli that set the stage for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). This is not to say that Hitler was unaffected by SVB. In spite of his NVB, he too attempts SVB, but, like everyone else, he fails, because SVB is a function of both our own repertoire as well as that of others.  

  

Tossing out the phenomenology of consciousness is an act of frustration that only seems to be justified by the all too human tendency to be right at all costs. And, costs there are. Those who are on this path only need machines or people who act like machines, to prove their point. However, for those who want to behave like a human, there is what should from now on be considered, the pragmatic immediacy of the here and now. In our quest of what consciousness is for, we have overemphasized again and again and we have been carried away again and again by the content of our consciousness. 

Our fixation on words has prevented us from experiencing the nonverbal while we speak. Rather than bringing us in touch with the nonverbal, our biology, which preceded the arrival of language, our use of words has taken us so often away from our body, that, for the most part, our speech is dissociative in nature. The so-called peace talks that have been going on could not produce any peace, because they were not peaceful. With understanding consciousness it is the same thing: as long as we experience the other person, our environment, as hell, we can’t make progress because our way of talking keeps us unconscious.

Our unconscious way of speaking (NVB) is based on fear and our conscious way of speaking (SVB) is based on safety. Consciousness makes sense because it makes us think of being consciousness of something. This definition makes it seem as if consciousness about one thing is as important as consciousness about another thing. However, it is only because of SVB that we can remain conscious. Moreover, our subjective here and now experience will only be apparent to the extent that we are stimulated to hear the sound of own voice while we speak. 

Our sound is produced in the here and now and our listening to this sound happens in the here and now too. By listening to ourselves while we speak, we are both conscious of how we speak and of what we say. In other words, the speaker and the listener are one in SVB. Indeed, consciousness of our way of speaking determines that what we say makes sense because of how we say it. In SVB we come to terms with the relationship between consciousness and reality. An externalistic or behavioristic perspective requires that we don't construe consciousness as something inside of us, but as something that is not only achieved, but also maintained, by the way in which we speak with others, who are our environment. From a materialistic perspective, we can now begin to analyze, while we speak, how what is said is actually affecting us. This is not based on introspection, but on an analysis of how we speak with each other. 

The discriminative refinement which makes SVB will be increasingly more accurate. Only a selectionist perspective informs us that the organism produces consequences in the environment and is capable of tracing a particular kind of verbal behavior, SVB, that is organized by the continued, reciprocated expression of a shared sense of well-being. In SVB, speakers and listeners embody their communication and describe how their speech affects matter, the instrument of sound, their body. In NVB, the opposite occurs. In NVB because we disembody our speech, we change the sound of our voices. In SVB we stimulate each other to remain conscious with an energizing way of speaking. In SVB we realize that we have remained unconscious due to another pattern of verbal behavior, NVB, which pushed out our first-person ontology. Thus, in SVB the importance of our first-person ontology is again restored.

March 20, 2014

March 20, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

I always felt apprehensive about having to cite the words that were written by others. According to me, words belong to everyone. The obligation to write that certain words were said or written by someone seems to indicate otherwise. What matters is that people understand each other better and that what was written will help us to live better lives. This is not the case. Our respect for what a person has written or said didn’t and couldn’t lead to the understanding that  interaction is a shared, reciprocal phenomenon. To the contrary, it has kept the false idea alive that speakers are separate from listeners and that writers are separate from readers. I call all of this Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), because the voices of those who do most of the talking sound horrible. 

When speakers believe themselves to be separate from the listeners and when  writers think themselves to be separate from the readers, they are like children who cry for their mother and who sound distressed. Each time we make a big deal about the words we use, we are like children, anxious that others will play with our toys. You may not think in this way because you don’t listen like I do. However, I think that you can hear it too. You can hear like me. I don’t claim to have any special powers, but I do claim that my listening is quite different from most others. I listen to myself while I speak, but most people don’t do that. Your voice sounds different depending on whether you listen to it or not. If you don’t listen to it, you sound terrible. You may not know this, but when you don’t listen to your own voice while you speak, this has a negative effect on you as well as on others. This effect goes unnoticed because we are used to it. We have accepted as normal a way of communicating which is in my opinion abnormal. How can you say your communication is normal if you speak with a voice which isn’t yours?

  

In NVB our voices stab, grab, push, pull, pound, punch, poke, choke, drain, coerce, distract, disregulate, demean and dissociate. The reason that we don’t hear this is not because we are deaf, it is because nothing usually makes us listen to how we sound while we speak. We would immediately change the way we sound if we knew how bad we sounded. Most of our talking sounds stressed, agitated, anxious, hurried, pressured, defensive, hostile, disjointed, harsh, arrogant, pretentious, fearful, humiliating, whiny, sucky, edgy, dry and muffled. 

   

These words were taught to me by my father, mother, uncles and aunts, by my grandmothers and grandfathers, my teachers, friends and by people who I grew up with in my neighborhood. We are not told to quote those who taught us how to speak!? That seems to make much more sense. I want to honor those who taught me how to speak by the way in which I speak. What I say definitely has something to do with whom I have been talking. 

As a matter of fact, with some people I can’t talk at all. When people have a behavioral history of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), and that is about 95% of us, they are used to talking at each other, not with each other, they are not listening and they want to force others into what they believe to be their way of talking, which supposedly is the right way, the better way or even the only way. 

Due to my back ground, I am inclined to put words together differently than you do, but that is nothing unusual, everybody does that. Whether we make sense by what we say or write is not a matter of our unique way of speaking or writing. Our success as communicators always depends on others, who understand it because they are already kind of thinking and talking like that. In other words, if what we say or write is too far removed from what others are able to understand, it will and cannot go anywhere.  

What we say depends on others. Nothing a speaker says makes any sense if there are no listeners. Likewise, nothing a writer writes has any meaning if there are no readers. Meaning doesn’t and can’t exist on its own. Meaning is socially mediated. Cultures may differ, but what matters in one society also matters to another. In the same way that Russian is spoken in Russia and Spanish is spoken in Spain, languages of the inhabitants of different environments only matter to those who know how to speak it, understand it, read it or write it. Indeed, there are different verbal communities, but they experience the exact same problems when their verbal behavior doesn’t accurately represent the reality.     

March 18, 2014

March 18, 2014

Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Because speech only makes sense if it is seen or heard, that is, if it is overt, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) evolve, like any other behavior of any other species, as behavior of the whole organism during our life time. References to invisible parts, such as our brains or our minds, cannot bring us any closer to ourselves, cannot bring us in touch with each other, and cannot lead to the kind of interaction which makes and keeps us conscious, because reference to invisible parts maintains the illusion that the description is more important than the described. Description is only important to the extent that it describes behavior correctly and gives us predictive control. Descriptions are useless and confusing if they do not give control over behavior that is described. As we know, many such descriptions exist. We are only able to separate inaccurate from accurate descriptions during SVB. That is why SVB is the category of verbal behavior which maintains more accurate descriptions and NVB contains the inaccurate ones.

  

The consequence of this learning is nothing to be guessed at, because it is clearly visible everywhere. NVB is ubiquitous because our interaction is primarily based on inaccurate descriptions. They determine not only individual lives, but also the lives we live together and how we organize our world. The same selective principles, the same environmental, external pressures that gave rise to living organisms across the generations, are responsible for the manifestation of SVB and NVB. Whether SVB, accurate descriptions, will be able to increase depends on environmental stimuli that make it possible. Prediction and control of SVB and NVB, which are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposing categories of verbal behavior, should be based on what we know about the similarity between learning and evolution, which work exactly the same. Private or covert speech is and has always been public speech and should be treated as such. We should let others know what we really feel and think and get it off our chest. In SVB we can embody our language and acknowledge that all behavior is externally caused. 

We will not all of a sudden realize that all human behavior, including our mind, is caused by environmental stimuli. This is primarily a consequence of how we talk. To think that this writing is going to bridge that gap is unrealistic. It hasn’t and it can’t. We need to talk to be able to differentiate between SVB and NVB. In other words, our accurate and inaccurate descriptions can only be discriminated during our public speech. If writing leads to SVB, then it is meaningful, but if it prevents it, as it almost always does, it inadvertently leads to NVB. 

 

Other than by talking, we have no other way of knowing if we are refining or preventing the flow of discriminative stimuli. It is not our personal fault that we have been fooled so many times. We can’t help but see it our way, because we have been forced into our belief in agency. Once our private speech is expressed again publicly, we know that it had to be said. Not publicly expressing our private speech and not being able to say what we think and feel has estranged us from our environment . It gave rise to mental health issues. 

SVB is pragmatic because it makes us think about what would happen if we could continue with it. Because the usefulness of SVB is self-evident, it is almost impossible not to think about its positive long-term consequences. The thought of having it in the future makes us dedicate ourselves to knowing more about it and to creating the circumstances in which it can occur. Yet, we continue to behave as if NVB is true, because we have suffered its negative consequences. We were mainly conditioned by NVB and punished for causing our own behavior.

Much misbehavior was reinforced by escape from the punishing effects of NVB. Perhaps most of what has been written was a function of our escape from NVB. With SVB, because we are saying more things, because our public speech will be more accurate and complete, there will be less of a need to write things. 

March 17, 2014

March 17, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

There exists never a situation in which negative emotions prevent positive emotions or visa versa. Emotions are behaviors which are maintained by stimuli which make them possible. Therefore, different sets of stimuli are made available when our attention shifts from positive to negative and from negative to positive emotions. All of this occurs because of our verbal behavior.  

Given our lack of knowledge about behavioral science, it is hard for most people to believe that there is no inner cause which determines whether students will learn or not. Genes passed on by parents make up our genetic make up.  An organism’s phylogenic material always interacts with its environment. Their genetically determined structure, their body, gives rise to learning behavior, ontogenic development in the class room. Certainly, during our life time, we go through many sets of circumstances that make this verbal learning possible.  

Phylogenetic and ontogenetic variability and not some kind of autonomous, inner agent, personality, nervous system, mind, motivation, intelligence or memory, determine why some students are more likely to pay attention than others, regardless of whether the teacher has high levels of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). This distinction is crucial, because changing what goes on inside the student's skin is inferior to teaching that is based on contingencies of reinforcement which are existing outside of the student's skin, in the environment. 

Manipulation of the environment is in essence the only tool a teacher has. If he or she is not thinking or talking about and experimenting with changes in the environment, then he or she is not very likely to have any success in teaching. Moreover, the teaching must involve environmental control that is compatible with the behavioral history of each individual student. This is precisely what Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) does! During SVB very different biological mechanisms are activated than in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The fear, anxiety and stress which are involved in NVB, are not conducive to learning. The neurobiological nonverbal messages which are sent during NVB condition both the student and the teacher to get better at fleeing, fighting and freezing. Only information that falls within that category of NVB will be strengthened. 

Alignment between our verbal and nonverbal behavior can only occur in SVB. Teaching mediated by SVB makes more sense, because it activates biological mechanisms which make it possible to speak more coherently and to think more clearly. Learning then is a function of the biological impact of SVB. Academic failure, by contrast, is a function of the biological impact of NVB. What is learned in NVB is to fight, intimidate, dissociate, posture, defend, argue, distract and dis-regulate. And, behavioral control exerted by NVB is always coercive. It is related to our personal history. Our acceptance of NVB is a continuation of this history, but it can’t bring forth or recover stimuli that evoke something peaceful. 

Because it is incapable of producing the stimuli that induce the experience of security, peace and well-being, NVB can at best only pretend to produce these. Thus, NVB often masquerades itself as a necessary condition for learning. This is how it has conditioned us into believing that knowledge is power instead of responsibility. Furthermore, in NVB we are bound to become more emotional and irrational and less responsible. In SVB we become more rational, more responsible, but less emotional. This doesn’t mean we will not have any positive emotions. In SVB we will only have positive emotions. However, in SVB we are less emotional because of the absence of negative emotions. Decrease of negative emotions is caused by our speech which sets the stage for this to happen.

Due to NVB we overrate the importance of negative emotions and we miss out on the power of positive emotions. As long as our negative emotions are not well-represented in speech, they will continue to undermine our relationships and create disorder. We don’t realize that in NVB, our negative emotions and aversive physiological experiences are experienced as identity or individuality. 

In SVB, our public speech doesn’t reject our private speech. In SVB, there is no boundary between public speech and private speech.  That boundary is only there in NVB, but it becomes meaningless in SVB. There is only one reality and that is the reality of speech. In SVB, however, our positive emotions form the nonverbal basis from which our verbal behavior emerges. In SVB our speech creates order in our environment, but due to NVB our identity is based on negative emotions. We like to think otherwise, but when someone doesn’t confirm who we believe to be, when our identity is challenged, we immediately experience negative emotions. This is no coincidence. If our identity was based on our positive emotions this would not be the case. 

In the same way that SVB dissolves the issue of public speech versus private speech, so too the issue of identity, and the many conflicts it gave rise too, will dissolve, because our identity is shared and based on positive emotions, which are maintained by the way in which we communicate. In other words, being real is absolutely not an issue when, as in SVB, our speech is real. 

It is not surprising that our identity is our biggest communication issue. With the distinction between SVB and NVB we are able to overcome this problem. The problem of identity is a function of NVB and the solution to this problem is to have conversation about identity in a SVB manner. In SVB our positive emotions don’t give rise to the idea of separateness.  Separateness is a consequence of discomfort. Connectedness by contrast, is a consequence of our safety and relaxation. It doesn’t matter whether the communication is between teacher and student, employee and employer, parent and child or husband and wife. There is no hierarchy that separates us into being more important than others.

In SVB the speaker is simultaneously the listener and those who speak listen while they speak. Self-listening can be done by all speakers and when this happens, speakers and listeners are emotionally and intellectually attuned. Because there is no struggle in SVB, speaking and listening is easy. In SVB the listener is also the speaker and is reminded about this by the speaker. The speaker only makes sense in relation to the listener. When nobody is listening there is no communication. The unit of analysis in operant conditioning is the three term contingency consisting of stimuli that cause responses, which either increase or decrease dependent on their consequences. Learning in SVB is embedded into our biology, which compels us to move away from NVB. This learning is effortless because only positive stimuli are being communicated.