July 21, 2014

July 21, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

For quite some time this writer has started every journal entry with the date and the announcement that whatever followed was written by him. It is odd to stare at a blank page and to write that something was written, which hasn’t even yet been written, which hasn’t even been thought and which is only thought while he is writing. This writer catches these thoughts of his private speech while he is writing in much the same way as he notices what he is thinking and feeling when he listens to himself while he speaks. However, the fact that he has written these words does not mean that he has caused or is causing them. 

By calling himself a verbal behaviorist this writer lets the reader know that this writing is caused by his environment. Since behaviorists are the only scientists willing to consider that scientific language is also caused by the environment, this writer considers himself a verbal behaviorist. There are multiple sources of causation which are producing these words, but this is summarized by the self-given title verbal behaviorist. The M.S., preceding this title, refers to the Master of Science in Clinical Psychology, which this writer obtained while he was still completely ignorant about behaviorism.  It is sad, but also comical to know that nothing of behaviorism was mastered during the years of arduous study for this pretentious degree, for which this author is still paying off huge loans. 

Since these words can be spoken, written, listened to and read, they are part of what B.F. Skinner (1957) called verbal behavior and they are not, as most people believe, things that refer to other things. When we say chair when we see a chair, it is a social affair. People from our verbal community produce the sound chair in the presence of a chair.  They are reinforced by producing this sound, for writing it, for understanding it and for reading it. Due to the reinforcement we receive when we use the language which is understood by the people from our verbal community, we are more likely to use the word chair. 

A long time ago, this writer wrote poems. One short one went like this:

they wanted chairs

poetry is like furniture

it fits or it doesn’t fit

if it doesn’t fit better not try it

people don’t like to sit on tables

on chairs they want to sit

The poem beautifully describes the behavioral perspective.  Chairs are made to sit on and tables are used to eat dinner at and to sit at with a chair. Their function pretty much describes the behavior that is involved. It is easy to see that one sits on a chair, but one sits at a table. One may of course also stand on a chair or on a table, but this is not their common usage. Chairs were made to sit on and tables were made to sit at. Likewise, a tennis ball is to be hit with a tennis racket, a baseball is to be hit with a baseball bat and a billiard ball is to be hit a cue. Of course, we can hit a tennis ball with a cue, a baseball with a tennis racket or a billiard ball with a baseball bat, but we don’t usually do that.  

The self-observation, which is at the core of this poem, is not magically caused by creativity or insight of the poet. It is the product of the discriminative contingencies that were arranged by the poet's verbal community. No one needs to decide by himself how tables and chairs are used. It is already decided and learning involves a process of familiarization with the ways in which things are done. Our habits, languages and cultures are behaviors.  If our verbal community is Russian, we are unlikely to learn English. If we grow up in a country that is plagued by war, chaos, poverty and exploitation, we are unlikely to be able to refine the accuracy and precision which are the cornerstones of science. We neither decide individually to learn Russian nor do we decide individually to fight for our survival. Our verbal community makes us believe the belief we happen to grow up in. This writer grew up in a Catholic family. He never asked to be born in sin and to feel guilty. The reinforcement which he didn't get at  home was found by him elsewhere.