June 6, 2015

June 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Please take off your spiritual hat and put on your scientific hat. This is the fourth part of my response to Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008).  Before I go further into the discussion of this paper, I want to record that an unusual event is taking place while I am writing this. It has happened before, but it is happening again, and because it has only happened a couple of times,, four times at the most, I notice it and find it worth writing about. Since I am responding to this paper and since I have so much time on my hands, I spend a lot of time writing. Also, as I am a slow reader and as my response is spread out over a couple of days, there are various journal entries of it. I mostly write in the morning, but I also write during the day or in the evening or during the night.  When I start writing it usually gets the date of that day, but if a second or third entry follows that same day, in the afternoon , in the evening or at night, I am inclined to put the date of the following day on it. Consequently, it can happen,, as it is happening right now, that I am three days ahead of myself. There is a sense of satisfaction in running ahead of time, a feeling of luxury, expansion and accomplishment . Of course, I know what date it is today and this is just a game I am playing, but I could decide not write anything for three days and there would be no gap in my journal entries. I also noticed that my entries are longer than usual,, sometimes 6 or 7 pages long. I attribute this to this letter type which seems to cover the pages quicker than other letter types, I used before. Furthermore, I have a sense I am on track because I have worked ahead. I am certainly not behind. I am not much into planning, but somehow I have planned ahead and it is affecting other decisions as well. Also in other areas of my life I feel I am on track.  Of course, all of this is because I have so much time to spend and few obligations. The semester has come to an end. I have one job as a care aid two days a week and I may get more work, but now I can spend lots of time by myself. 

The fact that Buddhists still find it worth mentioning that “information about the self (or attributes of the self) can be understood only through an analysis of the environment in which it is conceptualized (e.g. an individual’s relationship with others)”should make no difference to behaviorists.  Buddhists only want to gather scientific facts to prop up their pre-scientific views. As long as behaviorists are deluded by Buddhists or others who try to use behaviorism to prove how scientific they are,, they aren't going to gain any popularity. If on the other hand behaviorists succeed in communicating that it cannot be understood in terms of what people are familiar with, then people will be more benefitted by it. 

My analysis is like this: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) can only be understood as the absence of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB ).  Every time people bring in NVB , SVB is made impossible. We really don’t have much SVB as we can’t have much SVB, because we still accept this ridiculous and confusing going back and forth between SVB and NVB as if it is something meaningful,, as if it adds something useful. 

It is harsh,, but nothing useful is added by NVB. It is more of the same old nonsense, which stunts human development. Once we know SVB, there is no need to stop NVB.  It is the lack of knowledge, that is,, it is the behaviorist disinterest in the application of their own discipline to the complicated nature of the relationship between the speaker and the listener ,which made them unpopular when they convey behaviorism to people who are ignorant about it.  

There is no “higher state of being” but a better way of interacting is possible and urgently needed.  However, scholarly behaviorists and non-behaviorists alike are not going to be interested in this as long as they remain preoccupied with “the impermanent nature of things.” Skinner comes closest to SVB when he describes the self as “an organized system of responses,” and suggests that “behavior varies between interactions with family and close friends as a function of discriminative control exerted by each” (underlining added).  

However, in terms of mentalism, there is no difference between the Buddhist and the Western concept of self, but in behaviorism, there is no self , there never was a self. “The Buddhist concept of self” is not and cannot be concordant with behaviorism. To state something idiotic like that is like saying it doesn’t matter whether the earth is flat or round , that flatness is just another form or roundness, that flatness can inform us about roundness. The flat earth theory was wrong and the round earth theory was right, and the facts speak for themselves. The same is true for SVB. I am not trying to convince when I write the facts of SVB speak for themselves. One can  see and hear immediately that SVB is better than NVB. 

The “subject/object split” which is only theoretically not there in Buddhism or in behaviorism only dissolves during SVB, but continues as long as NVB continues. Who cares if we are dealing with “a functional definition of the self “or a structural definition of the self, when we still get stuck in our conversations with our definitions of a self? This is going to continue as long as SVB and NVB have not been properly addressed.  Behaviorists fool themselves by assuming that their functional definition of self, which supposedly is supported by Buddhism, “supersedes” the structural definition.

June 5, 2015

June 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is the third part of my response to "Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts" by Diller and Lattal (2008).  As any behaviorist should know, there is no “right understanding, right thought,, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right  effort, right mindfulness, right concentration”, it all depends on what is being reinforced. If acting like a slave, a drug addict, a criminal, or a gang member is reinforced the response rate of that behavior will increase. Right or wrong are values which are reinforced or punished. If listening to ourselves while we speak is considered wrong and is punished, chances that many people will be listening to themselves while they speak will be small. It is for this reason that hardly anyone listens to themselves while they speak. We achieve Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in situations in which we are reinforced for listening to ourselves while we speak.  

In circumstances in which we are not reinforced for listening to ourselves while we speak, we produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  In other words, when we are not allowed to listen to ourselves, while we speak, we lose our natural sound and we speak with an unnatural sound, which to others is an aversive stimulus. 

Our natural, voice, by contrast, is an appetitive stimulus. This is not difficult to understand. In fact, it is so simple that we don’t realize it. Yet, it makes an enormous difference whether we talk with a natural sound, which is obviously the sound which we have when we are at ease and when we are feeling safe, confident , supported, listened to, understood, validated and positively reinforced, or whether we talk with a voice which expresses our anger, fear, stress, anxiety, distrust, arrogance, forcefulness and negative emotions. We are so used to NVB that we accept it as normal, while in fact most of our conversations are a function of negative emotions. As long as we don’t acknowledge that NVB prevents SVB, we are satisfied with our minimal instances of SVB, which,, because we are so used to NVB, is seen as a problem instead of as a solution. 

The whole issue of “attachment “, which,, according to Buddhists, causes “suffering”, doesn’t  arise in behaviorism. There is no self to get rid of, there never was a self and there is no attachment, other than the attachment that is reinforced. Likewise, there is no need for “reflection” or “seeking” and no “suffering” to get rid of. These are Buddhist or non-scientific fabrications. “Improving the human condition” can only be done reliably with the science of human behavior, that is, with its latest extension,SVB. We need to have a different way of talking and our old way of talking, NVB, needs to be stopped completely. This may sound fanatical,, but just as water boils at 100 degrees Celcius,,SVB can only happen in absence of NVB. 

We are going to create the situation in which SVB can and will happen or we don’t. Obviously, we will not be able to built the SVB situation if we don’t acknowledge that there is SVB and that NVB is happening while we could be having SVB.  

This writing is meant to put SVB on the map or it should irritate the readers that they are constantly engaged in NVB. The “technology of behavior,” which, according to Skinner was needed “to prevent the catastrophe towards which the world seems to be inexorably moving” is SVB,, a novel way of talking. By insisting that behavioral technology was required he was implying that all our past so-called solutions, such as Buddhism, don’t work and are a total waste of time. His radical behaviorism rejected any idea of agency, including some Buddhist Eightfold Path which supposedly would “improve a person’s individual life.” Bluntly stated :Buddhism doesn’t care about the human condition,, because it lacks the specificity of schedules of reinforcement. Furthermore, Buddhism of course, presents “a case for a self” albeit  “not in a colloquial sense”, but in a spiritual sense. For Buddhism the self is not “defined contextually” ,but mystically and karmically. 

For behaviorists there is no “true state of reality emptiness or the absence of intrinsic existence” or whatever that means. For those behaviorists who have learned about SVB, there is the hopeful understanding that a novel way of talking is absolutely possible. 

Supposedly, the Buddhist’s “true self” is conceptualized as “the person in the relationship.” The authors refer to how we talk about the self by stating “when examining the self then, it is only possible to talk about the self in relation to everything else that is occurring or that has occurred” (underlining added). However, I think this is purely theoretical. Only when a person listens to him or herself while her or she speaks, can this person say anything meaningful about how his or her experience is related to what is occurring or has occurred. If listening and speaking are not joined and are not happening simultaneously, this person will have NVB because he or she separates the speaker from the listener. It is ludicrous that in enlightenment “all concepts lose value.” During SVB , which is not enlightenment, which is a better way of talking, all concepts,, all words,, all content, what we say, is meaningful, because of how we say it. Moreover in SVB, there is correspondence between our verbal and nonverbal behavior, that is, our verbal and our nonverbal behavior are aligned. Our verbal expressions will become more clear as we become more attuned to our nonverbal  experiences.

June 4, 2015

June 4, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is the second part of my response to Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008).  Only if one wishes to compare apples and oranges does it make sense (or no sense at all) to imagine that the “simplification of theoretical language to a few functional terms (e.g. reinforcer)”in behaviorism, is similar to “Zen Buddhism’s focus on the removal of abstract thinking by the individual.”  Surely, one has nothing to do with other,, but if one looks into that one finds something unexpected: “removal of abstract thinking” dumbs us down,, but simplification of theoretical  language to a few functions” makes us smart if it leads to the discovery of Sound  Verbal Behavior (SVB).  Behaviorists are as stuck with Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB )  as everyone else. With NVB we are merely pretending to talk. Buddhists are against talking and their attitude makes them into phony talkers.

A good example is the Dalai Lama. He is faking to have a conversation. His dismissal of other people their way of talking is best captured by the pot which blames the kettle that he is black.  If Buddhists and behaviorists would look into how, the behavior of the speaker and the listener is caused by the environment,, they would end up having SVB. However, I claim that neither Buddhists nor behaviorist s do this – while they speak.  They theorize, but in real conversation, that is, in SVB, we stop hypothesizing. 

Whether we interact with our environment and have SVB and take turns being a speaker and a listener,, while we as speakers are always our own listener, is determined by whether we are stimulated to listen to ourselves while we speak. The idea that we supposedly can listen to each other by not listening to ourselves, or, for that matter, that we talk at each other without actually also talking at ourselves,, is part of the dissociative illusion created and maintained by NVB.  If we talk at each other, we are not in contact with each other,. If we talk at ourselves we are not in contact with ourselves either.

Obviously, we cannot be in contact with others (the environment outside of our skin) if we are not in contact with our selves (the environment inside of our skin).  Our contact with others depends on our contact with ourselves and therefore how we talk with others is a function of how we talk with ourselves. And, of course, how we talk with ourselves is a function of how others have talked with us,, but this conditioning of the environment within our own skin will determine how we interact or fail to interact with the environment outside of our skin. Only in SVB can we successfully interact with  the environments on both sides of our skin. It is impossible to only interact successfully with the environment outside of our skin and it is equally impossible to only interact successfully with the environment that is within our own skin. In both cases we end up having NVB.  Only in SVB do we talk in such a fashion that the environment on both sides of the skin is perceived as one environment. 

In NVB we are either too outward or too inward oriented and both involve experiences of negative emotions. “Discussions of the presumed similarities” between Buddhism and behaviorism don’t help.The observation that “In Buddhism, the individual is connected with his or her environment” and “in radical behaviorism, the organism is interactive with its environment” didn’t lead to “any careful examination” on either the behaviorist’s or the Buddhist’s side. Moreover, it didn’t bring us any closer to the discovery of SVB. 

If someone would ask me: who is closer to SVB, the Buddhists or the behaviorist? I would answer without a moment of hesitation: behaviorists. The Buddhists have absolutely no clue about how behavior actually works. Moreover,, and this is what I am looking at,, Buddhists are worse talkers than behaviorists. 

Another half-baked behaviorist (Baum, 1995) wanted to “blend behavioral and Eastern philosophies in palatable way.” This guru with his insatiable need of disciples even suggested that it would be “respectable and nice” for behaviorists to “improve their public image” by blending it with New Age”. Nothing of the kind happened. It shows Baum got carried away by his esoteric, molar perspective, which doesn’t stimulate or enhance any conversation. Skinner would turn in his grave to let "a psychic" know his displeasure. 

I find it very curious that the authors of this paper use the words “through an experimental analysis, Skinner believed it was possible to identify underlying principles of behavior that transcends species” (underlining added) . What are they talking about? Oh,, that’s right,, they are only writing. Skinner didn’t just “believe it was possible “to identify these underlying principles,, he actually found and documented them and his experiments provided empirical evidence for his findings. Why write ""once prediction and control  are achieved, relevant technologies may be employed to change behavior and it becomes possible to effect socially desirable change, perhaps ultimately improving the human condition?" (underlining added)  There is no question about it that prediction and control will lead to improving the human condition, so why use the word “perhaps? 

Presumably behaviorists can learn something from Buddhists,, but  I don’t think so. If learning occurs, Buddhists have to learn from behaviorists and not the other way around. It isn’t happening that behaviorists understand, let alone accept, that Buddhism is basically a science of enlightenment.”   Such prediction is pure fantasy.

Are behaviorists enhanced by replacing the three-term contingency with nebulous concepts such as “emptiness” or “clearing away the mist of ignorance to open the way to enlightenment?”   They may “seek to understand the nature of the physical world” but their belief will take them to Dalai La LaLand. At the end of the day it is still the  the inner behavior-causing agent, who, loaded with karma, seeks to “escape from the suffering inherent in the world”  and tries to achieve, or realize a higher sense of self, by means of rule-governed behavior , by following the Eight-fold Path to enlightenment . What a joke!

I can’t believe that the Behavior Analyst published this nonsense. The “interdependence of all things” is just a mystical version of the naturalist view that there is only one reality. It requires another way of talking, which is easily obfuscated and forgotten about by bombastic writings such as these.  I am offended, (as a self-taught behaviorist,) that a peer-reviewed journal like the Behavior Analyst accepts papers in which authors write “it is believed that through the cultivation of certain behaviors (as described by the Eightfold Path) it is possible to escape from the suffering of this world, and to achieve nirvana (i.e. freedom from suffering and extinction of the individual being).  Is it a need for social acceptance that behaviorists now practice respect for and are willing to promote religious dogma, or is it because they fail again and again to articulate while talking the importance of the science of human behavior that behaviorists try to  “become enlightened”, so that “their attachments to the world ceases and craving and suffering also end (Mitchell, 2002)?  Frankly, I think it is because they just talk out of their ass. More precisely, it is because behaviorists,, like most other people (Buddhists included)  engage in NVB  because they don’t know how to maintain SVB. 

As the need for acceptance, is more apparent in behaviorists than in Buddhists they lack the knowledge and social skill  that signifies that acceptance. Thus, it is obvious in behaviorists that they have NVB! The “social improvement “behaviorism supposedly has in common with Buddhism hasn’t happened as the issue of  SVB  remained unaddressed. All scholarly attention goes to writing, not to speaking. Supposedly, speaking is less important than writing.

June 3, 2015

June 3, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

The following writing is my response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008). It is in the middle of the night and I am in a meditative mood. I am quiet and I like to be up at this time. The moon  lights the garden, it is pleasantly cool and I sit with my legs crossed on the soft carpet.

I always like to give a response to the abstract of a paper. Based on my reading of the abstract, I have an idea of what this paper is going to be about and I begin to formulate what I am going to write. However, one thing is always certain. Regardless of how I am going to respond to this paper, I will write about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).  I only read papers like this to be able to write about SVB. I already disagree with the authors who hope by discerning the communalities between Buddhism, and Radical Behaviorism to enhance each philosophy. 

 I am not into enhancing Buddhism, but I am into enhancing Behaviorism. Although at this point hardly any behaviorist recognizes my work, my writings about SVB are meant to enhance behaviorism. I consider myself a behaviorist and I consider SVB a behaviorist concept. My goal is to extend Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior with two subsets of verbal behavior he  or other behaviorist haven’t talked about,, namely, SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). I can’t imagine he wasn’t aware of them or didn’t consider them, because SVB and NVB create contingencies for behaviorism or for mentalism. 

The reason that paper was written was obviously because the authors felt behaviorism was missing something which presumably could be found in Buddhism. I would never attempt to enhance Radical Behaviorism with something as rotten as Buddhism. The authors think Buddhism may enhance Behaviorism because they still believe in this superstitious nonsense. It is because I have been rejected by many behaviorists for not being behaviorist enough that I make a big deal out of this. Buddhist mumbo jumbo is not scientific.

I would never characterize radical behaviorism by saying it “ sought to articulate the principles by which the control of human and nonhuman behavior might be understood, emphasizing the role of environment in this control.” (underlining added). Since radical behaviorism succeeded in defining these principles ,it is odd that these authors use the word “sought” which comes from “seeking” and which directly relates to the mentalistic world of mysticism. Unlike so-called seekers of enlightenment, and truth, radical behaviorists didn’t look inside themselves, for the causation of behavior and were able to identify environmental variables which cause the behavior. 

Control of human and nonhuman behavior is not a matter of chance, of whether it “might “or “might not” “be understood”, it has been understood! This kind of writing makes an uninformed reader think as if only some haphazard attempt was made, which didn’t entirely succeed.  All this only to mollify the reader for the good stuff behaviorist s might  be able to learn from the less assuming, humble, but pre-scientific Buddhism. I take offense with the word “might” which questions the empirical facts which are well-established. 

Any wise behaviorist must immediately be thinking about the lack of reinforcement when he or she reads that the supposedly enlightened Buddha “suggested first and foremost that there is suffering inherent in life”.  Supposedly, this suffering is caused by the individual or rather, by his or her karma. To give these two mutually exclusive world views equal footing and to cover up the undeniable fact that the authors are pandering to religion,, they are treated as different philosophies, which might have something in common . “

At first glance radical behaviorism and Buddhism seem like disparate philosophical entities; one is a philosophy which informs a science; the other is a philosophy which informs a religion.”   Really? We are asked to look further, and deeper into the supposedly profound meaning of Buddhism?  Moreover, we are asked to look for communalities between science and religion “because it may result in fewer competing demands on followers of each.”   I firmly believe there should be competing demands on the followers of each: science is the end of religion! It is meaningless to write about any religion that it is about “ authenticity, rigor and logic.”

One of the main reasons we don’t have SVB is because we keep buying into NVB thinking that it is SVB; old wine in new bags.  If one knows what SVB is one cannot be fooled, but as long as one doesn’t know what SVB is,, one will be befooled,  regardless of whether one is befooling others or is befooled by others or whether one is a radical behaviorist or not. Someone who knows SVB is neither befooled by others nor is he or she trying to befool others. Only those who continue to have NVB are swayed by the overrated vague spiritual " quest for truth." 

"On further analysis it may be possible to conceptualize aspects of Buddhism as variants of behavioral philosophy, thereby building yet another bridge between the latter and other great intellectual traditions.” There is no need to build a bridge between behaviorism and outdated ways of thinking. To call them “great intellectual traditions” is to praise the emperor without clothes. What is needed, however, it a clean break from our superstitious past, but this break is only going to come about in a conversation in which we explore the great difference between SVB and NVB. 

Our superstitions continue because of NVB and are extinguished by SVB. Supposedly, an “understanding of how these entities operate similarly may permit a better understanding of the behavior of the followers of each”. Furthermore, “this understanding may be important in terms of communicating between disciplines or groups of people; with better understanding, communication between areas may be enhanced.”(underlinings added). The authors seem to be thinking that understanding improves our communication and that bad communication is due to a lack of understanding. In SVB we find out that it is not a lack of understanding which prevented communication, but a lack of experiencing. Moreover, in NVB the need for understanding is endlessly emphasized, while nobody is experiencing anything. NVB is dissociative in nature because our reality is so aversive and hostile. In SVB, on the other hand, we find out that communication is immediately improved due to appetitive stimuli.   

Morris (2003) has commented on the “benefits of consilience of knowledge across different intellectual domains” ,but Buddhism and behaviorism are not different intellectual domains just as biology and physics. SVB is the only language of consilience.Without doing anything about how we talk nothing changes. Williams seems to recognize this as he “discussed the necessity of removing the dualistic framework that dominates colloquial verbal behavior in understanding both Buddhism and radical behaviorism.” I claim that this “dualistic framework that dominates colloquial verbal behavior” is kept going by NVB.  The subject - object distinction is really about the speaker-listener distinction in everyday verbal behavior. In NVB there is a difference between the speaker and the listener, but in SVB the speaker is his or her own listener. 

These “different frameworks” always come to us as a speaker comes to a listener. The question is whether the speaker is controlling the behavior of the listener with an aversive or an appetitive contingency. In the former, we will continue with our NVB, but in the latter we achieve SVB.  There is no discussion between “schools of thought” there are only individuals representing these “schools of thought.”   As we will discover, NVB continues our separate “schools of thought” but these schools will merge and become irrelevant into the consilience produced by SVB.