June 7, 2015

June 7, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is the fifth part of my response to “Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008).  When I woke up this morning from a good sleep, it smelled like smoke.  There is a fire going on. Interesting how smelling the smoke, how an olfactory discriminative stimulus, immediately led to window-closing responses, that one nonverbal behavior led to another nonverbal behavior. I also said to my wife Bonnie, “wow it is really smoky out there” and she agreed that I should close the windows, that is, she mediated my verbal behavior. 

The cat Kayla greeted me and accompanied me seated on my shoulder while I was closing the windows,, I also talked with her about the smoke,, but she didn’t mediate my verbal behavior. She isn’t capable of that. However, she detects the smoke as a nonverbal aversive stimulus. Like us, she would try to escape from the smoke. 

In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the speaker’s voice functions like an aversive stimulus. Just like the smoke caused the window-closing behaviors,, the noxious stimulus of the speaker’s voice immediately causes nonverbal behavior in the listener. We don’t usually pay attention to the fact that the body of the listener is always immediately affected by the voice of the speaker because we give more importance to what is said than to how it is said. It can be argued that during NVB the attention of the listener is distracted from the nonverbal and fixated on the verbal. Essentially, the listener is scared away from his or her own nonverbal response because of the aversive sounding voice of the speaker. Said in Freudian terms,, the listener will then ‘defend’ him or herself verbally from the speaker.  

My wife woke up and showed me one of the zucchinis she has grown in her vegetable garden. The smoke has lifted and she has opened the windows again. Fresh morning air comes through the house and takes away the smoke that previously entered. We talked about the relief  we felt that the smoke had gone away and we were reminded of one time the smoke stayed around in Chico for three days.   

In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) the voice of the speaker is experienced by the listener as an appetitive stimulus. In the same way the cool and fresh air, affects us,, the voice of the speaker affects us positively if he or she listens to him or herself, that is,, if he or she is nonverbally experiencing what he or she is saying. In NVB in which the speaker is not listening to him or herself while he or she speaks,, the speaker is not nonverbally experiencing what he or she is saying. Consequently, in NVB the listener is coerced into verbal fixation and dissociation from his or her nonverbal experience. In SVB, by contrast,, the speaker’s voice provides an affective nonverbal environment in which the verbal  can become clear due to the connection between a speaker’s verbal and nonverbal expression. Since this connection is expressed by the speaker, it can be experienced by the listener. In NVB this connection is not expressed by the speaker and can therefore also not be experienced by the listener. In SVB, the windows can and will be opened to let the fresh air in, because there is fresh air. If we open the windows in NVB, we will only let in smoke. 

Let’s now get back to discussing the paper. “The verbal behavior associated with describing a self as an entity relates to function, rather than to topography, and function is ultimately context dependent.” In SVB we are no longer trying to “describe the self as an entity” and we realize that this urge arose in the absence of SVB, that is, due to the dominance of NVB. We have an urge for SVB and we try to have it when it is absent. Once it is there, the urge to have it is dissolves. Likewise, we have no need for fresh air when we have fresh air. We long for fresh air only when the air is polluted by smoke. In NVB we “describe the self as an entity”, but in SVB there is no such urge. The fact that the issue of self doesn’t arise during SVB, and only arises during NVB tells us that SVB and NVB are response classes which are functionally related to environmental variables and thus are context dependent. 

We get carried away by talk about "topography" only during NVB, but SVB facilitates conversation and exploration of functional  relationships.This issue of function versus form is important in the analysis of problem behavior and is described in “Learning” (Catania,2013) .  Topography of the self -injurious behavior of a child with developmental disabilities is not going to be of much help in changing this child’s behavior. Unless we find out of what this behavior is a function (e.g. getting attention,, escaping from difficult task or organic source) , we will not be successful in altering it. Unless we look at the common consequences of the behavior, rather than its form, we are likely to exacerbate it rather than improve it. 

Catania explains, “when a class of responses seems insensitive to its consequences, as when the first [attention-seeking] child’s self-injurious behavior seemed not to extinguish,, we must entertain the possibility that we have improperly defined the class, and that it is part of a larger class the members of which continue to have the consequences it once shared with them" (underlining and word between brackets added ). Two such “larger” classes are SVB  and NVB. 

In “Behavior is not ultimately about behavior” Carr (1993) adds another piece of the puzzle, which is often brushed underneath the carpet. He describes the great difference between “unidirectional versus reciprocal causality” of behavior. He argues against the often made stereotypical accusation that behaviorism is “mechanistic”, and “conceptualizes humans as objects to whom we do things”.  This unidirectional, S-R (respondent )  behaviorism which preceded Skinner’s R-S (operant ) behaviorism, maps  onto NVB. 

Reciprocal causality, explains scientific aspects of  interaction that expose NVB as unidirectional, mechanistic and antithetical to human relationship.  Moreover,Carr’s research “demonstrated that the problem behavior of children [with developmental disabilities] has systematic and profound effects on adults who teach the children (Carr, Taylor & Robinson, 1991)  (underlining & brackets added). Likewise, there are “systemic and profound effects” on anyone who talks with anyone,, that is,, there is always bidirectional causation whenever we engage in conversation. Talking is never unidirectional even though in NVB we made it seem as this was the case . 

 

In NVB, we have an inaccurate conceptualization of human interaction. The “dynamic ongoing system”, which contains all the variables of both the speaker and the listener and which is SVB, became visible due to the fact that a passionate and clinically-oriented behaviorists like Carr began to recognize that he and his colleagues were “not talking about unidirectional effects but, rather, about child behavior altering adult behavior, and vice versa.”  

 I have listened to a You Tube lecture byCarr and was instantly struck by how he sounded!!!! I highly respect him as his devotion to his profession made him acknowledge that he was profoundly altered by his interactions with developmentally disabled children. 

In SVB we can finally begin to experience, understand, accept and appreciate the fact that we are altered by all our interactions with others. Carr’s findings extend to every conversation. Carr,wrote that paper because he wanted behaviorism to be viewed as a study of purpose rather than a study of behavior. His views align with SVB. Not surprisingly, Carr was liked very much by his students and  he taught, like me, classes in Principles of Psychology class,.

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.