June 24, 2016
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer
Dear Reader,
This is my ninth response to
“Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). I have
talked with enough people to be sure that nobody has really any problem accepting
the fact that the world is not flat or the center of the universe.
It is because of how we talk that many don’t understand nor
accept Darwin’s that theory “removed humans from their special place at the
pinnacle of the biblical hierarchy of animals, stipulating that
the processes of evolution through natural selection that operated on all
animals had operated, and continues to operate, on humans as well.”
Amazingly, this
conclusion has not been made; those who understand, but who still have
superstitions, maintain these by their way of talking. Addressing
“epistemological barriers” without even addressing the fact that they are a
function of how we talk with each other is nonsense.
The world is
not in a chaos because of different conflicting theories or philosophies, but
because of how we talk. The point I am making is that we are not talking as long as our theories and
philosophies don’t match. We only assume we are talking, while we maintain our
outdated beliefs.
The way of
talking which makes us hang on to falsehoods is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).
It is a way of talking in which the speaker demands the attention from the
listener. During NVB different speakers with different beliefs struggle to get
each other’s attention. The struggle
for attention and attempts to dominate the conversation are characteristics of
NVB.
The scientific way of talking, in which we are looking at and listening to
the facts, is Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). During SVB communicators
have a positive effect on each other because of how they sound. They agree that
barriers are always caused by aversive-sounding speakers. They are
intellectually engaged as no attention is drawn to negative emotions. SVB is
scientific because we maintain our positive emotions.