September 29, 2014

September 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Now that this writer knows about behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, he is reassured about things he was unclear about when he began studying radical behaviorism. That most people don’t have a scientific account for behavior doesn’t mean that there is no scientific account or that there is no need for it. Yet, it occurs to this writer that even behaviorologists mistake what is written for what is said. The difference is huge, but not obvious. Similarly to the view that an inner mystical agent causes individual behavior, most people believe that what is written is causing them to talk the way they do. This troublesome falsehood is perpetuated by the fact that what is written is being reinforced much more than what is said.

We can’t become scientific about human behavior as long as we hang on to explanations which don’t explain anything and which only give us the illusion that they explain something. Skinner was right by asserting that the prediction and control of behavior is not enhanced by explanatory fictions. The same is true about our preference for written words over spoken words. It is not the proverbial child, who is thrown out with the bathwater, but the bathwater, the environment, is thrown out. Written sayings have turned things upside down. 

We are not going with the flow, but the flow is going with us. We are not going against the whole world, but the whole world is going against us. The notion that something written could explain how we speak has had disastrous consequences. We are at war with each other and we don’t talk because of what is written. What we say is limited by what is written, because we have lost our ability to reinforce it.