June 18, 2015

June 18, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

It is remarkable to find out that even most behaviorists are not interested in or unaware of the importance of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior. Many don’t bother with it as reading and studying “Verbal Behavior” (1957) will turn their world upside down. The intellectual challenge of explaining verbal behavior,  like any nonverbal behavior, as behavior that is shaped by selection mechanisms, requires a complete change of looking at things, or rather, since we are dealing with the speaker and the listener, a totally different way of listening and talking. 

This new way of talking must occur between members of the verbal community from whom we have derived the verbal practices we used to call language. Behaviorists haven’t put much effort into talking and are isolated from the verbal community and this is something which needs to change. Obviously, they are only going to do that if they experience the reinforcing effects of social interaction. While writing and reading and studying it is easy to forget that verbal behavior is behavior mediated by other persons. The most important part of mediation by others, such as being accepted, belonging, connecting and enjoying  one' s company, is not happening, because they don’t talk. 

The reinforcing effects of verbal behavior can only be experienced in what I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), because SVB is the kind of talking in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an appetitive contingency. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), on the other hand, the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. Since these two subsets of vocal verbal behavior have not been identified and analyzed verbal behavior remains a hot potato, since it strikes directly at the core of everything that is wrong, destructive and negative about our most practiced way of talking. 

It is needed that we explore and analyze the reinforcing effects of our verbal behavior during our conversations. To differentiate between direct and indirect effects, the non-mediated and the mediated effects, we must talk and be willing to accept many unpleasant, punishing effects, which are part of the talking we are most familiar with: NVB. Given the fact that most verbal episodes consist primarily of instances of NVB, people naturally move away from aversive stimulation. However, the problem with escape and avoidance behaviors is that they are direct responses to the environment and prevent verbal behavior. Many if not most of our protective, defensive, non-talkative behaviors are, of course, elicited respondent behaviors, which restrict and often make totally impossible our indirect, operant, approach verbal behavior.

Skinner, who, in writing Verbal Behavior, applied the concepts which he had already worked out experimentally, allowed his private speech to become part of his public speech. Like Darwin, he was quite aware that people would not accept that his words would completely change their public speech, but his already validated experimental knowledge told him to make room for and listen to his private speech. He said resolutely to himself “as behaviorists we’ve got to tackle it sometime.” Of course, he was referring to how our verbal behavior, like any other nonverbal behavior, is determined by environmental variables and that all his research applied to language as a natural phenomenon.

Although “Verbal Behavior” (1957) was theoretical, it was Skinner’s interpretation of how his laboratory experiments relate to language. Since its publication many experiments have been done which have validated his extrapolations. However, none of these experiments dealt with the elephant in the room: the future probability of speaking and listening behaviors are also selected by consequences. When we are in environments in which we cannot speak and are forced to listen, our private speech becomes more pronounced than our public speech. This has led to art as well as to scientific discovery.  SVB, in which speakers listen to themselves while they speak, is both an art and a science. 

June 17, 2015

June 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is my eight and last response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. Even if Hamlet became a Zen Buddhist, he would never say “to be or not to be or neither.” Since his old repertoire would have been extinguished,, he would only say the word “neither,." His new Zen repertoire, which is without “to be or not to be” wouldn’t make any sense. Most likely, however, Hamlet wouldn’t say the word “either” either, because his Zen meditation would have taught that saying or thinking that word would trigger “to-be-or-not-to-be” private speech. Although as an enlightened Master Hamlet would have “public behavior” which would be “fluent, presumably very sensitive to the environment and seemingly without mediation,” behavior analysts aware of SVB would immediately hear that he was having NVB, even if he wasn’t opening his mouth. The emperor without clothes seems to have reincarnated into a Zen master without words.

The subject-object relation exists because of NVB and once NVB stops our faulty knowledge stops. Stated differently, once SVB begins, Zen-nonsense ssmply stops. It is not that “Other distinctions born from an I-world (subject-object) relation would also become untenable.” In SVB nothing becomes untenable, as the knowledge expressed in SVB is sufficient to the individual.   To be with “No I” and to have “no life or death and no I that suffers”, one must have SVB and one must of course be in a situation which allows SVB. Instead of creating such a situation Zen patriarchs create a situation for NVB, by being against talking. 

When I was in my teenage years, I read a lot of Zen literature. It helped me move beyond the Catholic thinking of the verbal community in which I had been raised. The dialogues between Zen masters and disciples delighted me because of the seemingly original answers that were given by the Zen masters. As I grew older and  familiarized myself with Zen meditation these dialogues seemed more and more dull.  I became interested in meditative communication.

 

When the meditation had ended, people would drink tea and slowly began talking again. Whenever that happened I felt disturbed and  the natural thing to do was to talk about it. However, every time I opened my mouth, I was rejected, avoided, stopped, punished, send away, shamed and ignored. It  was a painful period of my life, but I persisted with my inclination to talk about meditation. It seemed to me that the quietness and peacefulness we had experienced during our meditation should carry on in our talking. Although I wanted to achieve this, I was unable to accomplish it, but I was at the same time intrigued about why this was such an impossible thing to do. It was because of the repeated rejection and my failure to engage in what I now call SVB that I ended up talking with myself. 

 I was hyper-sensitive to rejection and predicted it correctly. It was  frustrating there seemed to be no way to talk about this. One day, I got on my bicycle, to go to some place where I used to hang out,, but while I was on my way there something stopped me. I was thinking about the people I was going to meet and I suddenly didn’t want to see them anymore. It would have been more of the same conversation. I had to do something, but didn’t know what. 

While I was thinking about my previous conversations,, I began to peddle my bicycle slower and slower until it came to a stop. I stood next to my bicycle and felt afraid. I was trembling and I was not successful in calming myself down. I stood there for couple of minutes, which seemed like an eternity. It was next to a canal and a big ship was slowly passing by. The bridge nearby was open. By looking around I regained a sense of calmness. I told myself to go home. For a moment, I thought I was going to ride my bicycle back home, but decided to walk back home with my bicycle in my hand. As I came closer to my home, the fear of not knowing what to do  increased. What was I to do? It seemed as if everything I could have done had been done. There was nothing left to do. My wife was at work and I was at home alone. 

I went into the empty attic of our house. There was only an old carpet on the wooden floor. I sat on that carpet and thought about Buddha who must have meditated often. I tried to close my eyes, but it was so sunny that I opened them again. I stared into the attic space and then I saw underneath the roof a small box. I was curious what was in it. It must have been left by the old people who used to live there. They were too old to climb the stairs and were now living on the ground floor. The box contained some old novels. I took them out one after the other, but then I saw a small gong. It had a string on it and I held it up by its string. I wondered if there was also a stick with a ball on it? I reached in the box and found it. I held the stick with the cotton ball in one hand and the gong in my other hand. I struck the gong and heard its sound and then I said to myself " sounds good.” As I said that I heard my voice and that I was sounding good. I instantly felt good It was a discovery. The gong taught me to sound good. When I sound good, I feel good. 

I had found what I had been looking for. This is how I wanted to talk. I wanted to sound good while I speak. I sat there striking the gong many times and while talking with myself tears rolled down my cheeks. I told myself that everything was going to be fine and that from now on I was going to listen to myself while I speak. I told myself that others can also listen to themselves while they speak and that we can talk like that. The well-being from listening to my own voice was so profound that I laid on my back and fell asleep. 

When I woke up I wanted to go to my friends and tell them about what I had found. I tried to explain it to them and told them about listening to myself and that they could also do that. It  didn’t work out very well. Many people were just as tired of me as I was of them. I had to go back again into my attic to hear my gong. When I struck it and matched its sound with the sound of my own voice, I realized  thatI had stopped listening to myself while I had been talking with my friends. I practiced again and again until I had found this peaceful sound, the sound with which I wanted to talk. 

Since at that time I didn’t know anything about behaviorism or about environments stimulating and maintaining my behavior, I was beating myself up over the fact that I again and again lost the sound with which I wanted to speak. Again and again I went back to my attic to practice by myself what I now call SVB. 

 My old friend Lak, who always drank and smoked pot, said that he liked what I did and he encouraged me to continue with it. With him I was able to explore for the first time what happens when two people listen to themselves while they speak together. We spend days talking with each other, while walking through the city, over the beach or in the park. Although I needed to repeatedly correct him because he was not listening to himself, he also numerous times corrected me because I was not listening to myself. As time went by and our friendship blossomed, a time during which he used less drugs and drank less, it became apparent that I had really found something. Especially when other friends joined us it became more and more interesting. SVB was and is totally enjoyable and energizing.

June 16, 2015

June 16, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing will be my seventh response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. I had a conversation with friendly, shy man at the swimming pool. He told me he had multiple sclerosis and swimming helped him. I felt like telling him about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), because he seemed open to me. I explained that one can have SVB by oneself as well as with others. The key principle is that one listens to oneself while one speaks. I told him that if he is at ease, relaxed and calm, he can hear that in the sound of his voice and enhance that if he keeps making that sound and listening to it. He became suddenly very enthusiastic and told me he was reading the bible, sometimes many times a day. It had made him aware of exactly what I was talking about. He had felt much better after he had been reading out loud, that is, after he had been listening to his own voice. Because he was so shy he had never talked much and didn’t get to hear his voice very often,, but after he began reading his bible out loud, his body had felt much better and he was also more clear in his head. He said he didn’t pay attention anymore to the words of the bible,, but he mainly used it as an opportunity to listen to the sound of his own voice and he was even jokingly imagining that he was hearing God talk through him.

 I explained that SVB it is just a natural phenomenon. He was happy  I talked with him and when I came out of the swimming pool after I swam a few laps,, he was waiting for me and wanted to share a verse from the bible which related to what we had talked about: in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. He was so excited that he had recognized in his own voice his sense of well-being and he gave me a hug and thanked me. Listening to our voice is very reinforcing.  

I also received a letter from my Dutch friend  Lak who recently moved to Spain. It is unknown what made him decide that or how it is possible for him to do this,, but he seems to be happy there and I am happy for him. He commented on his hand writing, which was clearer than before and he expressed himself coherently and elegantly in his letter. With him I exchange only written letters. Today’s letter feels like receiving a present. He also complimented me about my writings as he appreciates them very much. 

“At the start of koan study, Zen monks are often told  that they will feel as if they have swallowed a molten pellet that will burn until resolved” (underlining added). They are told by the Zen master who does all the speaking and I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) . They are only supposed to listen and any kind of speaking behavior on their part is stopped. In Zen the annihilation of verbal behavior is considered to be a good thing. And, similar to many other spiritual practices,, monks are told that the reward will come later, after they have been purified by their suffering. The Zen koans are meant to relieve them from the burdens of their world view. They experience enormous distress because “verbal behavior, whose use is encouraged throughout life and is left to operate unrestrained by instruction on how to control its effect on the rest of our behavior.” 

Ironically, behavior analysis is often used to teach verbal behavior to autistic non-speaking children. Zen, seems to be teaching its follower to become autistic. The only difference is that the “first fruits of Zen study often do not blossom for years, sometimes decades” because “verbal behavior is fluid and integrated into so much of our repertoire.” What are these so-called fruits anyway? All we have as evidence is some weird acting authoritarian Zen masters. I think SVB is needed, but Zen repertoire or any other NVB isn’t useful for becoming “affected by the larger context,,” The benefit of SVB is that it  works immediately and everyone can experience and verify it while they are talking.  

    

However, without SVB, even behaviorists will not be “affected by the larger context”. Koans are in fact no different than any other sales technique to gain compliance. When “comprehension is Zen, and not of Zen” Buddhists are fooling themselves that they are somehow beyond verbal behavior. Like gullible costumers they are suckered into buying into whatever they are sold. This tradition is kept alive by Zen masters who all pretty much say the same things. Zen is not as Bass proclaims “difficult for Westeners” Behaviorists who know about SVB, see right through the cheapZen scheme.  Zen,, like any other religion, is make-belief. 

Although behaviorists are more into writing and reading than into speaking and listening,  they are still more into speaking and listening than any Zen Buddhist. Consequently, they are not inclined to replace “a typical verbal community’s practices” such as those of their own behaviorist community, with  those“Zen masters use to generate verbally unmediated responding.” Why would any  behaviorist want to know whether he or she is “progressing toward Satori?” Bass writes that“persons who operate within different paradigms literally do not perceive the world in the same way and so may not be able to effectively communicate.” Those who buy into the idea of less talking are of course less effective when they talk.  

A striking example of that was illustrated by the aftermath of the tsunami which hit Japan. Thousands of people had drowned and coastal towns had been devastated and survivors, due to their Zen culture, were unable to cope with the loss, of their loved ones as they didn’t know how to talk about their emotions. Instead of “Zen master’s conversations” which are “meaningless to those with typical verbal histories, this would be a very different, more life-like, interpretation of Skinner’s words that “different verbal communities generate different kinds and amounts of consciousness and awareness”(Skinner, 1976). However, I do agree with “the study of subjective states requires the study of verbal communities practices,,” because this will finally make us realize that different verbal communities have SVB and NVB in common. Such a realization, unlike Satori or Samadhi, would be tremendously revolutionary. 

Zen and behaviorism part ways on many more issues than only on meaning.  “In Zen, meaning is communicated by creating the singularity – conditions under which verbal behavior is excluded – whereas behavior analysis requires describing and controlling the conditions under which a word is used.”   The Zen master speaks and the Zen student listens, but behavior analysis explains “the Zen master’s baffling verbal behavior” simply as NVB, as demanding, dominating and distracting the listener’s attention.

Bass assumes that “behavior analysts and Zen Buddhist may agree that [knowledge] returns to a larger world that generates verbal behavior but is not itself affected by verbal behavior in anything like the way like normal-life repertoires are affected “(underlining added). Presumably, in the strange world of Zen there are no actual people  affected by the verbal behavior of other people? Isn't verbal behavior a consequence of a verbal community? The community which has generated the verbal behavior is of course also affected by it. To state that the community of Zen people is not itself affected by their verbal behavior that it has generated, reduces people who live in that community into objects. This is yet another perfect illustration of how NVB creates it’s an own unscientific reality. Zen’s fanatical  rejection of normal-life repertoire is equivalent with NVB which makes us talk in an abnormal manner.  The illusion that Zen “produces an unmediated perception” of the world  and is based on "a stimulus singularity”, which “challenges the science of behavior” is ludicrous. Like other sectarian behaviors Zen must be exposed.

June 15, 2015

June 15, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing will be my sixth response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. I woke up from a dream in which I was walking in the streets of my old home town. The houses had been painted in a light shade green. I had to complete some dreadful task and was carrying a heavy bag. Upon seeing the streets I knew so well, I dropped the bag and told myself that I didn’t need to complete this task. It made me feel emotional, so much so that I almost cried, but then I woke up.  

“As Zen Buddhists often emphasize, all talk about Zen is done from the outside looking in, and is meaningless from a Zen point of view.” From the point of view of the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), this is a typical NVB statement,, because, NVB is meaningless talk and  only SVB is meaningful.  Spiritual condemnation about talking is always about NVB.However, such condemnation shows as much a lack of skill as well as a lack of understanding. Since people, Zen masters included, don’t know how to have SVB, they condemn NVB, but, as this statement makes clear,, talking as such is abandoned. 

Yet, there is something inconsistent about this abandonment because masters still talk at and instruct their students. Also, it illustrates this talking happens fairly often, and that is why “Zen Buddhist often emphasize that all talk about Zen is done from the outside looking in.”  (underlining added).  It seems to me that these Zen masters were able to recognize that their own way of speaking was NVB , but since they didn’t know about SVB, they tried to limit  their speaking altogether, while they, the so-called authorities,, paradoxically continued to talk about Zen. In an attempt to create peace, Zen, like other religions, has perpetuated NVB. The statement “all talk about Zen is done from the outside looking in, and is meaningless from a Zen point of view of Zen” denies that public speech or “outside” environmental variables, cause a person’s private speech construed as the “inside.”  

Zen is based on a misunderstanding of the causation of behavior. Supposedly, the person is causing his or her own behavior and that is why he or she is instructed to work on his or her enlightenment by not talking, by looking at the “outside” from the “inside.” 

In SVB a speaker pays attention to what happens within his or her own skin. This is congruent with Zen’s focus on the “inside.” However, in SVB, we talk,, but in Zen talking supposedly has become meaningless. Zen can’t be an unexpressed nonverbal peaceful experience, of “things as they are", SVB teaches that, such peaceful nonverbal experience follows from verbal expression. Complete means congruence between verbal and nonverbal expression of the speaker. It means that in SVB the speaker is his or her own listener. 

Interestingly, in Zen jargon there are more references to looking in than to listening in, because talking is not considered to be an option. Yet, if we would begin to listen to our private speech,, we would figure out something about our public speech: if public speech is NVB,, it results in negative, non-meditative, endlessly chattering self-talk.

Bass who is convinced that both "share at least some  common ground” , acknowledges that for both “Zen and behavior analysis commonly held distinctions do not apply”, but then he goes on to make the silly claim that “Zen goes further because distinctions themselves don’t apply.”   From a behaviorist point of view he is absolutely wrong. Behaviorism goes further than Zen because it considers verbal behavior which operates on the environment on both sides of the skin. Moreover, in SVB this effect is such that the environment inside and outside of a person’s own skin is experienced and talked about as one. Zen’s wholesale rejection of verbal behavior,, indeed, of the verbal community itself, is eerily similar to the way in which sects indoctrinate and recruit new members by alienating them from their familiar environment. Zen may have led to some meditative nonverbal behavior, such as archery, music,, tea-drinking, walking and sitting, but it didn’t and it couldn’t contribute anything to enhancing our way of talking. "A verbal community’s distinctions are not applicable to Samadhis and Enlightenment.” This anti-social aspect of Zen is deeply problematic. 

Zen masters presumably “warn monks to ignore experiential sideshows produced by Zen practice.” Such warnings are verbal behavior and the Zen monk repeats these instructions to him or her self during his or her meditation.  Thus, public speech is affecting private speech. In behaviorism private speech is considered to be the same as thinking. Calling it “a sideshow” doesn’t explain anything. 

Behaviorism explains private speech,, but Zen isn’t  and can’t.  Moreover, behaviorists are not against private speech, which they consider to be part of verbal behavior. Furthermore, a behaviorist would be a bad behaviorist is he or she would have to warn those whom he or she instructs about the “sideshow produced by” their instruction. Plus, there is precision teaching in behaviorism. Rather than having verbal-less activity, they engage in enriched verbal behavior because in SVB speaking and listening behaviors are and remain joined. The processes Bass claims which are due to Zen meditation(generativity, stimulus equivalence, transformational functions and ultimately, stimulus equivalence singularity), nevertheless require involvement in speaking and listening. 

“Zen, we are told, gets us to things in themselves (i.e. independent of distinctions we bring)” (underlining added).The fact that Zen masters say this, doesn’t make it  “an Eastern science, a distortion free means for, as Skinner said, “getting back to the original.”” There is no such thing as Eastern science. Likewise, there is no Eastern biology or physics. “Getting back to the original” as Skinner described it in Walden Two or Verbal Behavior always involves people talking with each other and making sense to each other. In fact Skinner was already referring to SVB. 

Let’s explore the Zen Koans from a SVB/NVB perspective. According to Bass,, the Zen master says “No” to the question “does even a dog have a Buddha nature?” because it “quells the unconscious flow of private, verbally influenced responses during mediation.” Rather than “stopping verbal activity” in the belief this will bring a person closer to enlightenment, in SVB speakers are given the full support to express themselves verbally  Moreover, the SVB knowledgeable, behaviorist audience would unequivocally answer to the question that a dog is incapable of verbal behavior.

As previously stated, Zen masters mostly give examples that deal with seeing. Thus, Master Baizhang answers that enlightened persons are “not blind to cause and effect.”  If Bass is “not blind to cause and effect” how come he insists on the impossibility of “verbally unmediated perception?” Skinner describes this blindness as “a fixation on imagined or fabricated causal chains,,” but Bass doesn’t realize perception is part of verbal behavior. 

The shoes the master placed on his head were another example of seeing. Presumably this demonstration shows we are using words as a tool in a wrong way “for achieving our ends.” There is a word for what Bass describes: reification, changing a verb into a noun.

Another great example of Zen’s overemphasis on the visual tricks was a master who pointed his index finger upward whenever asked a question. He even cut off of the finger of an innocent child, who might have been too talkative, but who presumably instantly reached enlightenment. It makes me sick to my stomach to read such a fanatical explanation about such an event that “the child had to lose the symbolic representation for Zen before Zen itself could emerge.”