November 29, 2016
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer
Dear Reader,
This is my twenty-third response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals
have affective lives?” I find Panksepp’s animal research of great importance as
it provides neuroscientific evidence why certain stimuli affect humans
positively or negatively. I am very interested in the listener’s experience of
the speaker’s voice.
“All
other mammals learn to vigorously self-inject drugs that are addictive in
humans, probably because they produce similar desirable feelings, and this
eagerness can be monitored in at least some species of rodents by their
enthusiastic euphoric, SEEKING-indicative ultrasonic vocalizations.” Likewise,
when people engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), they agree with each other that
they sound good. Moreover, experience of the SVB speaker is addictive; the more
you hear it, the more you want it, as it produces “desirable feelings.”
My goal is to create an addiction
for SVB. If we all became addicted to SVB, we would change the world. “Surely we can conclude that the only reasons addictions
occur is because drugs produce desired feelings, in both mice and men.” No
doubt “the brain mechanisms for psychological experiences are very
important guides for what humans and animals do,” but without Panksepp’s
electrical brain stimulation or without SVB, these “desired feelings” would not
and could not occur.
Panksepp states “The resulting
“Law of Affect” is that ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’ would NOT work unless they
changed the way animals feel affectively.” Each time the “Law of Affect” worked
properly in our conversation it was because the affect of the listener was
changed and improved by the speaker. Thus, the SVB speaker creates an
appetitive contingency, but the NVB speaker creates an aversive contingency for
the listener. Positive behavioral control can only be achieved with SVB and
negative, coercive, punitive behavioral control always involves NVB.