December 9, 2015

December 9, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my ninth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (O’Donohue et al., 1998). The authors state that “Skinner simply wanted to develop an economical analysis that would ultimately lead to practical technologies for bettering the human condition (e.g. Skinner, 1971)”. Within each culture there are only two vocal response classes, called Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). These vocal response classes have great explanatory power as they provide the practical solutions to our problems of communication. 

I don’t like the phrase “bettering the human condition” as I want to be specific about how we sound while we talk. When we talk with each other, we have SVB, but when we talk at each other, we have NVB. This is the same for all human beings. In the former, there is a bi-directional relationship between the speaker and the listener, that is, the speaker can, at any time, become the listener and the listener can, at any time, become the speaker. In the latter, however, the speaker and the listener are separated, they cannot switch sides and there is no turn-taking. In NVB, our speech remains determined by our hierarchical differences and, therefore, it will be uni-directional. 

An important feature of NVB is that the speaker aversively influences the listener. In NVB speakers create and maintain an environment of fear, intimidation, domination, exploitation, alienation, pretense, dissociation and negative emotion. NVB is not communication, but we  adhere to it by default as we haven’t yet learned how to have SVB. We have endlessly talked about how to improve the human condition, but what needs to be improved is our way of talking. As long as NVB, which goes on everywhere, is accepted as communication, our relationships remain a total mess. 

In NVB, a person’s private speech is not considered to be caused by public speech. Consequently, people still believe that they are causing their own behavior. NVB communicators dis-regulate each other, but SVB communicators co-regulate each other. We keep, like inexperienced children, disturbing each other due to our lack of skills. In SVB, we realize that our private speech is caused by our public speech and that the joining of our speaking and listening behavior is an essential behavioral cusp, which requires an environment that is free of aversive stimulation. We have yet to learn how to create and maintain such a safe environment with a SVB way of talking.            

December 8, 2015

December 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my eight response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (O’Donohue et al., 1998). The authors state that “All behavior is understood to be a function of environmental variables, and behaviors are selected based on their consequences (i.e. through contingencies of reinforcement and punishment).” We can only learn about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) if we get better at reinforcing each other for having SVB. As long as we are more likely to tell each other what is wrong we overemphasize punishment and continue our involvement in and our contribution to NVB. In SVB reinforcement is not overemphasized, but more reinforcement certainly becomes possible due to our repeated exposure to and involvement in SVB. 

Something interesting happened yesterday. One student, who is always sitting at the back of the class, demonstratively looked up at the clock, then looked at his phone and was obviously not very interested in anything I was saying. I was distracted by him and described this feeling to the class. Just as this student was affected by me, I was also affected by him. By reminding the class, but also myself, of this bi-directional influence, I was not feeling upset or rejected and it felt as if everyone, this student included, was paying more attention again. The distraction created NVB, but as I was able to describe it, it became SVB again. I was not punishing the student for not being interested in me and I thanked him for communicating by looking at the clock that he was not feeling well. I reinforced the concept I had talked about: whether we co-regulate or dysregulate each other. And so a disturbance became a teaching moment. 

“Language is simply a type of behavior (Skinner, 1957); it is subject to the same contingencies of reinforcement as all other behavior.” As the above example demonstrates, these contingencies can change rapidly during any verbal episode. From one moment to the next there can be an instance of SVB or NVB. This important fact about verbal behavior has not yet been properly analyzed. Also, during yesterday’s class, I was reminded of the enormous stress and anxiety I have experienced while I was in my graduate study. Looking back on that, I realized how punitive academia is and how common it is for everyone to accept that.

December 7, 2015

December 7, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my seventh response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (O’Donohue et al., 1998). Like other behaviorists, these authors reiterate that behaviorism, like Darwinism, “removes humans from a special place in the hierarchy of living organisms.” However, they have no understanding about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). They don’t realize that a certain way of talking, NVB, maintains our “special place in the hierarchy of living organism.” In NVB the speaker and the listener are set apart by hierarchical differences. More precisely, hierarchical differences prevent the joining of our speaking and listening behaviors.

Hierarchical differences cannot be maintained when our speaking and listening behaviors are joined. Surely, “Humans are taken to be similar to other animals in many important ways: As a species we are subject to the selection of physical attributes through evolution and contingencies of survival, and as individuals our behaviors are subject to selection by the consequences those behaviors have in our ontogenetic evolution (Skinner, 1981).” Our problem is not that we cannot see ourselves as “similar to other animals”, but that we don’t hear that we are similar and that our similarity is apparent in the simple fact that our verbal behavior is selected by its consequences.

We have high rates of NVB as NVB is reinforced. If SVB was reinforced we would have high rates of SVB. “Selective contingencies” that explain these response classes are clear: in threatening environments we engage in NVB and in safe environments we engage in SVB. We will see ourselves as “similar to other animals” once we hear we are similar to each other as humans, but this will only happen as we engage in SVB. SVB only occurs due to a contingency of reinforcement, but cannot occur with a contingency of punishment. SVB is possible due to the absence of aversive stimulation. In SVB, the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener-other-than-the-speaker as well as the speaker-as-own-listener as an appetitive stimulus. The contingency which sets the stage for SVB includes and expresses the environment that is within the speaker’s skin, but in NVB this crucial part of the environment is excluded, not expressed and not listened to.   

December 6, 2015

December 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my sixth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (O’Donohue et al., 1998). Skinner wrote “We have not advanced more rapidly to the methods and instruments needed in the study of behavior precisely because of the diverting preoccupation with a supposed or real inner life” (Skinner, 1975, p.46). 

Although this is true, I want to restate it: “We have not advanced more rapidly to the methods and instruments needed in the study of behavior precisely because” we are used to a Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) way of talking. Our NVB doesn’t and can’t accurately express the behavior of the “organism as a whole.” We need to have Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) to be able to do that. Moreover, the switch from NVB to SVB doesn’t depend on the use of behavioristic terminology. 

Since the shift from NVB to SVB, like any other change of behavior, is determined by environmental variables, it is explained by radical behaviorism. Stated differently, radical behaviorism makes more sense when there is SVB, but it didn’t and couldn’t make sense due to NVB. 

Behaviorists emphasize (but due to NVB often ‘beat a dead horse’) the student must “look to the environment for the origins of behavior.” I say the student must listen to the environment; he or she must listen to the speaker, especially when he or she is him or herself the speaker. Only in SVB the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. Only the SVB speaker is capable of accurately expressing that part of the environment to which only he or she has access. 

By listening to him or herself while he or she speaks, the speaker-as-own-listener can and will be expressed. Without this special focus on the speaker-as-own-listener, that part of the environment which is within the speaker’s own skin cannot be accurately expressed. Without listening to ourselves while we speak, we will dissociate from the environment within our own skin and become disembodied communicators.

Naturally, the neural behavior of the speaker was and continues to be changed by the different environments he or she is in. Thus, the speaker was conditioned by previous conversations to either have more instances of SVB or NVB. Our tenacious “preoccupation with a supposed or real inner life” is because we did not accurately express how we were affected by our current and our previous environments. Once we have more SVB, our body changes and with that our environment changes. 

December 5, 2015

December 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my fifth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (O’Donohue et al., 1998). “The radical behaviorist must assume that it is “the organism as a whole that behaves” (Skinner, 1975, p.44). Behaviors such as thoughts, beliefs and desires must be examined in relation to the organism’s environmental setting.” 

You, my dear reader, most likely only have had a few experiences of yourself “as a whole that behaves.” Accidental, fleeting moments in which you were able to acknowledge the truth of this assertion were usually explained as some kind of ‘religious’ experience as you didn’t  have any scientific language to describe it. However, once you know the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), you will know that SVB is the speech of discovering, acknowledging and understanding the reality, while NVB is the speech of covering up, dissociating from and wrongly describing the reality.

As long as you don’t know the difference between SVB and NVB, you will have no other choice than to continue your non-scientific discourse, in which you think and believe that you can create your own reality. Due to NVB, you still believe that you can look inside of yourself to see why you are doing something wrong. Only to the extent that your NVB has been stopped could SVB stimulate you to listen to and speak with your external environment, as speakers, who listened to themselves while they spoke, stimulated you to listen to yourself while you spoke.

Only in SVB do we come to terms with “the hitherto inexplicable” and are we able to “reduce any supposed inner contribution which has served in lieu of explanation” (Skinner, 1975, p. 47). The common belief that “explanations reside inside the organism” is maintained by one particular way of talking. Unless you identify NVB as the response class that is based on negative emotions, which are the consequence of hierarchical differences, you will not be able to discover, explore, enjoy and create the environments and the people who maintain SVB as your way of talking will be based on fear, anger, hate, shame and guilt. Lack of scientific progress in psychology has resulted not only from the fact that radical behaviorism was misunderstood and misrepresented. Neither radical behaviorism nor psychology has accurately described or explained the high rates of NVB which prevent scientific discourse.