March 22, 2014

March 22, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Consciousness and unconsciousness are extended patterns of verbal behavior  stimulated by our environment. When contingencies for consciousness are present, we find ourselves in very different environments as when they are absent. In the former, we feel safe, supported, bonded, but in the latter, we feel threatened, isolated and disconnected. Our individual pattern of verbal behavior either contains or doesn’t contain stimuli that set the stage for our first-person ontology of consciousness. And, if our repertoire contains it, we are capable of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but if it doesn’t, our way of talking only produces stimuli that set the stage for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). This is not to say that Hitler was unaffected by SVB. In spite of his NVB, he too attempts SVB, but, like everyone else, he fails, because SVB is a function of both our own repertoire as well as that of others.  

  

Tossing out the phenomenology of consciousness is an act of frustration that only seems to be justified by the all too human tendency to be right at all costs. And, costs there are. Those who are on this path only need machines or people who act like machines, to prove their point. However, for those who want to behave like a human, there is what should from now on be considered, the pragmatic immediacy of the here and now. In our quest of what consciousness is for, we have overemphasized again and again and we have been carried away again and again by the content of our consciousness. 

Our fixation on words has prevented us from experiencing the nonverbal while we speak. Rather than bringing us in touch with the nonverbal, our biology, which preceded the arrival of language, our use of words has taken us so often away from our body, that, for the most part, our speech is dissociative in nature. The so-called peace talks that have been going on could not produce any peace, because they were not peaceful. With understanding consciousness it is the same thing: as long as we experience the other person, our environment, as hell, we can’t make progress because our way of talking keeps us unconscious.

Our unconscious way of speaking (NVB) is based on fear and our conscious way of speaking (SVB) is based on safety. Consciousness makes sense because it makes us think of being consciousness of something. This definition makes it seem as if consciousness about one thing is as important as consciousness about another thing. However, it is only because of SVB that we can remain conscious. Moreover, our subjective here and now experience will only be apparent to the extent that we are stimulated to hear the sound of own voice while we speak. 

Our sound is produced in the here and now and our listening to this sound happens in the here and now too. By listening to ourselves while we speak, we are both conscious of how we speak and of what we say. In other words, the speaker and the listener are one in SVB. Indeed, consciousness of our way of speaking determines that what we say makes sense because of how we say it. In SVB we come to terms with the relationship between consciousness and reality. An externalistic or behavioristic perspective requires that we don't construe consciousness as something inside of us, but as something that is not only achieved, but also maintained, by the way in which we speak with others, who are our environment. From a materialistic perspective, we can now begin to analyze, while we speak, how what is said is actually affecting us. This is not based on introspection, but on an analysis of how we speak with each other. 

The discriminative refinement which makes SVB will be increasingly more accurate. Only a selectionist perspective informs us that the organism produces consequences in the environment and is capable of tracing a particular kind of verbal behavior, SVB, that is organized by the continued, reciprocated expression of a shared sense of well-being. In SVB, speakers and listeners embody their communication and describe how their speech affects matter, the instrument of sound, their body. In NVB, the opposite occurs. In NVB because we disembody our speech, we change the sound of our voices. In SVB we stimulate each other to remain conscious with an energizing way of speaking. In SVB we realize that we have remained unconscious due to another pattern of verbal behavior, NVB, which pushed out our first-person ontology. Thus, in SVB the importance of our first-person ontology is again restored.