November 18, 2016

November 18, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twelfth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” Unless we accept and understand our own affective lives, we will not be able to accept the affective lives of animals.  I disagree with the often heard notion that by learning about animals we learn about ourselves. It hasn’t happened and it isn’t going to happen! Panksepp wouldn’t have had to write this paper if the opposite was true. We know as little about the affective lives of animals as we know so little about our own emotions.

Although Panksepp is unhappy with the pervasive communication style in the modern neurosciences and correctly describes it as “automatic” and “autocratic”, he doesn’t really go into this topic. Anyone who is familiar with the Sound Verbal Behavior/ Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction would be telling you that Panksepp is describing NVB.

We cannot express or explore our own emotions as long as we remain engaged in NVB. Panksepp laments how his colleagues talk. “Currently a form of “ruthless reductionism” (behavior and brain count, but experience does not) rules among the functional neurosciences—among scientific practitioners who have the best empirical tools to address questions concerning the causal infrastructure of subjective experience.” Again he gives a perfect characterization of NVB, speech in which speakers and listeners disconnect from their feelings.

In NVB emphasis is always placed on understanding each other, but this verbal fixation disconnects communicators from their experience.  In SVB, however, the listener’s experience of the speaker matters. In SVB, the speaker’s voice evokes positive emotions in the listener, which then facilitate understanding, but in NVB, the speaker’s voice elicits  negative emotions in the listener, which make understanding impossible.   

November 17, 2016

November 17, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eleventh response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” The fact that an eminent scientist as Panksepp has to write another paper to convince other neuroscientists that questions about the internal experiences of other animals can, of course, be answered, indicates that there is something terribly wrong with how scientists talk with each other.

Why is Panksepp still not believed when his entire body of research proves his point? His affective neuroscience is NOT listened to or talked about as Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is more prominent in academia than Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). These two opposing ways of talking have never been addressed. NVB continues as long as we overemphasize the importance of written words and underestimate the importance of spoken words. Any informed person would agree that in the case of “primal affective issues” we are not “merely speculating.”

Why is Panksepp, who, like B.F. Skinner, obtained empirical data, still being accused of committing the “sin of anthropomorphism?” People may be stuck to their beliefs, but what is not so obvious is that their confirmation bias is maintained by how they talk and by how they force others to talk. Moreover, in NVB people try to hide their ignorance. As they cannot refute his findings about emotions they have to ignore him.

Although it is absolutely clear “many psychological predictions about human feelings” can be “generated from existing cross-species animal BrainMind databases,” Panksepp, like a modern day Socrates, is accused of committing a mortal sin. When I listened to his presentation on You Tube the other day, what really struck me was how friendly, sensitive and cautious he spoke. Panksepp produces mostly SVB, but those who vehemently oppose him produce only NVB. Panksepp’s sincere way of talking is breath of fresh air in a world which is dominated by NVB.    

November 16, 2016

November 16, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my tenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” To advance his own affective neuroscience Panksepp speaks to a mentalistic audience, but he can only pay lip-service to what he knows about operant conditioning.

If he had been true to what he knew, he would no longer be referring to “higher aspects of the human mind” or “the basic neurophysiological processes of “lower” animal minds” to point out that they are linked. 

Operant conditioning is based on the premise of continuity of behavior and pigeons have been used to figure out schedules of reinforcement which also apply to human behavior. Now read Panksepp’s attempts to get staunch non-behaviorists to accept his research findings. He writes “To proceed on this tack, investigators would need to accept one grand but empirically robust premise—that higher aspects of the human mind are still strongly linked to the basic neuropsychological processes of “lower” animal minds.” I agree that “one grand empirically robust premise” is needed, but that premise was already has been in place in radical behaviorism for many years. To deny this is to misrepresent the science of human behavior and to pretend as if it doesn’t exist.

There is no need at all to refer to animal or human, lower or higher minds, to explain behavior. However, the necessary change in content as occurring in behaviorism should also have led to a change in tone, but it didn’t. It couldn’t as behaviorists were as unaware about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as non-behaviorists. Acceptance of this fact as well as any other empirical facts requires that we talk with each other in a manner which is free from aversive stimulation. In effect, we need a communication laboratory to stimulate, shape and maintain our SVB. We can have SVB, deliberately, consciously, continuously and skillfully.        

November 15, 2016

November 15, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my ninth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” It should be clear to anyone reading this that the still pervasive stance in modern neuroscience that “automatically and autocratically precludes the study of how affective feelings are generated in animal brains” has nothing to do with how animals behave, but has everything to do with how humans behave.

The automatic, autocratic speaker is a blunt speaker who engages in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In other words, scientific development is halted by a particular way of talking in which the speaker dominates the listener. Such unscientific, forceful and biased speech should be controlled, but it continues to be accepted everywhere as long as we haven’t distinguished between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and NVB.

I predict that NVB will soon be recognized as the biggest obstacle to scientific progress. The SVB/NVB distinction explains dilemmas which neither Panksepp nor any other scientist has been able to address, let alone solve. As the “study of how affective feelings are generated in animals brains” is impaired by how we talk, the study of how affective feelings are generated in human brains is equally compromised.

Why do you think so “Many choose to ignore the likelihood that raw affective experiences—primal manifestations of “mind”—are natural functions of mammalian brains, which could serve as key empirical entry points for understanding the experienced reward and punishment functions of the human mind?” Since they understand that a construct as “the human mind” is an outdated explanatory fiction, behaviorists only talk in terms of operant conditioning and “reward and punishment.” This necessary definitional restriction of speech, which emphasizes the importance of what they say over how they say it, also prevents them from acknowledging the importance of the SVB/NVB distinction.

November 14, 2016

November 14, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eight response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” I predict that thirty years from now everyone will know about the importance of Panksepp’s primary emotional processes in animals and how these innate emotional brain-mechanisms either set the stage for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in humans.

Panksepp laments “The dilemma is that such brain functions can only be well studied in animal models, and a sustained conversation about how affects are generated by the brain has never been engaged.” I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t engage in a “sustained conversation.” With Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we can measure cerebral blood flow and neural activity. Panksepp’s seven primary emotional processes (CARE, RAGE, PLAY, FEAR, JOY, PANIC, LUST and SEEKING) can be also be identified by how we sound while speak.

Why do we fear “anthropomorphic reasoning” when humans and animals in fact experience the exact same emotions? We have to get over this common fiction that we are NOT animals. The question is not whether animals are like us, but to what extent we act like animals and to what extent we are different? Stated differently, “anthropomorphic reasoning” is not only an appropriate starting point, but it is also the only way in which we can begin to make any sense of animal emotions.

Unless we pay attention to how we sound while we speak, we continue to demonize and toss out our subjective, animal experience in our quest for the holy grail of scientific objectivity. Even Panksepp doesn’t realize it is NOT the rejection of animal subjective experiences, but rejection of our own subjective experience which is the real issue. That is why he writes “Since affects are fundamentally subjective experiences, they have been the prime targets for critique of the kinds of brain processes we should never discuss in animals.”