June 8, 2015

June 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is my sixth response to “Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008).  I first want to finish my thoughts on Carr, who, like Skinner, was a real gentle man. I feel fortunate to have heard him and I write about him because I am inspired by him. Carr’s lecucture is a verbal episode in which we can hear lots of  Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) instances. I highly recommend everyone to listen to his lecture on You Tube. If you google this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kkocTdn0iY , you will be able to hear for yourself what a wonderful man he was.

 

His enthusiastic approach which rubbed off on his students made him write “Most people respond that my approach to behaviorism must be idiosyncratic, and that I am surely a prophet ahead of my time. Of course, I am not ahead of my time; instead, I am solidly in the mainstream of operant behaviorism.” Carr is absolutely unique among behaviorists in that he emphatically addresses bidirectional causality, specifically how it relates to our vocal verbal behavior.

Going back again to the paper on “Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism”, it should be clear to behaviorists that “Buddhists who retain the notion of free will” are mentalists. The statement that without free will “liberation from the life cycle is impossible” should make behaviorists laugh, but the authors go further to make their point and compare Buddhism with Christianity. In Christianity free will is also “necessary for individuals to choose to live in particular ways to achieve salvation.” After that they go on to claim that “free will in Buddhism and in behavior-analytic determinism have functional parallels.” It is unbelievable how far people will go in making it seem as if they are having SVB, while in fact they are engaging in NVB. This is typical holier-than-thou behavior.  

The behaviorist Chiesa (2003) writes “When situation or historical variables are implicated, it may be easier to be compassionate towards individuals who engage in behavior that may be considered bad than when the individual is, because of his assumed free will, responsible for his or her own behavior” (underlining added). In NVB we try to be compassionate, but only in SVB we truly are. There is no need for “increased compassion towards individuals who engage in undesirable behavior.” If we are to stop their undesirable behavior, we must know of what is this behavior a function. It is a function of unidirectional interaction, my way or the highway or NVB? 

The bidirectional causation of the behavior of both the speaker and the listener becomes clear when the speaker receives feedback from the listener, who is able to give this feedback, because he or she is allowed to become a speaker. The speaker is able to receive this feedback because he or she becomes a listener and is capable of being a listener to both the speaker who is different from the listener and the speaker who is the same person as the listener. 

A deterministic outlook doesn’t necessarily result in SVB.  Most likely it results in NVB, because it goes against what everyone believes. It is easy to see that radical behaviorism, which goes against what Buddhists,, Christians and even atheists believe, leads to an emphasis on words such as “deterministic” and “function”, while ignoring nonverbal, biological aspects of the interaction which play a much bigger role than our recently developed cognitive abilities

It gets even more esoteric when the deterministic functional account is claimed to be equivalent to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, “the idea that every moment is a moment of rebirth”. Although the Buddhist s deny the possibility of “the transmigration of the soul” it is presumably "possible for the individual to be changed into something other than its previous form.” Moreover, “this notion of reincarnation is foundational” in Buddhism.  It is important to reflect on the fact that a bunch of behaviorists wrote this paper to make behaviorism more attractive to New Agers. The process of trying to convince the reader is always essentially a sales process. SVB, however, is not a sales process and is not understood as long as people think that talking is about buying into a message or not buying into it.  In NVB we are only busy with whether we buy it or not, whether we are sold on a message or not,, or whether we are selling our message or not,. 

Similarly, Buddhists remain busy with a self or not.  And, a NVB way of talking also keeps behaviorists preoccupied with a self.It should be noted that the authors write “rather than speaking in mystical terms, the transitions to which it refers are happening in the life of the individual” (underlining added) . Indeed, they are not speaking and even if they were speaking it would sound the same. 

Surely, “an organism is changed when exposed to contingencies of reinforcement”, but the behavior of a New Agers or self-abdicating breath-watchers, is not going to be changed by behaviorist’s belief in the similarity between behaviorism and Buddhism. It is astounding these authors state "in a science of behavior, it may be sufficient to speak of order at the level of environment-behavior interaction and not appeal to other universes of discourse.”  (underlining added).  I remind the reader that the authors, are not speaking, but writing and the reader is not hearing anything, but is  only reading. Writing and reading appeal to “other universes of discourse” than speaking and listening. To confuse the two is to engage in NVB.   

We engage in SVB not because we are convinced, about it, but because it is possible. When it comes to death, of course, the organism stops behaving, but the environment with whom the organism interacted will continue without him or her, that is,, the environment will be changed due to his or her departure. Only the behavior of those who have survived the person can now be analyzed. It is completely wrong to conceive of Buddhism and behaviorism as “systems in which death may be conceptualized as a continuous state of change.” 

Central to radical behaviorism is the behavior of the organism which completely ends when the organism dies, while only the behavior of other organisms “who have shared an environment with the deceased” continuous in a changed form. Thus,, there is no “important behavior” of an “important person” (Buddha,  or Skinner)  which “continues in the collective works.” Only those who live can know, read, write or talk about and teach these works. There is neither a Skinner nor Buddha who lives on. The presumed notion of continuous change is an inaccurate depiction of death. To really talk about death is to have SVB, but to talk about so-called ongoing change is NVB. 

Also the notion that “cultural selection is the mechanism” by which “the essence of the originator…may be said to be preserved... albeit in modified form” (Glenn, 2003) (underlining added) distracts from the fact there is no originator and that nothing is said. If something is said it will only be by others than these presumed originators. They don’t “preserve in modified form” some other organism, but they are affected by papers, books, lectures or this blog, which is not the same as interacting with these persons when they were alive. 

We cannot be affected in our behavior by someone who is not there,, by an absence. The wish for something to be there which is not there, signifies our inability to change, which , as Glenn (2003)  has stated, may be due to cultural selection.  The Buddhist concept of “nirvana” , or the “escape from the life cycle and the suffering inherent therein”, is a failed attempt to cope with loss. Supposedly our higher self is not attached and doesn’t grieve. Fact remains, that we do grieve and we don’t “become another person after one in –and one out breath.”  Behaviorism hasn't been effective at all in the “removal of the construct of the self,” but SVB  makes it effortlessly possible.

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.