October 18, 2014

October 18, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

 

This writer received an email from the behaviorologist Stephen Ledoux, whose book “Running Out Of Time” he is currently reading. Ledoux is involved in what may be his final battle, which he is unlikely to win. Since he is about to retire, he hopes that his behaviorology courses will be continued by psychologists, but as most of them  believe in the agential causation of behavior, the chances that that will happen are slim. This writer believes Ledoux is right: only behaviorologists can teach behaviorology courses. It must be painful to see his life’s work, a total of ten behaviorology courses, be voted out politically. Yet, this is the unscientific world we live in, in which the contingencies for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are much more successful than the contingencies for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

According to this writer, however, the supremacy of the contingencies for NVB will not last forever. He has all the proof that, if given the choice, students will almost unanimously choose for the contingencies that make SVB possible. Many of his students have said that a course in SVB should be mandatory for all students. 

The fact that academia hasn’t woken up to SVB doesn’t surprise this writer. When he first read about the science of environment-behavior controlling relations, he  immediately knew it couldn't work as long as our way of talking is not under discriminative control of behaviorology. With all respect for the hard work done by many behaviorologists and behaviorists, their way of talking, like everyone else’s way of talking, is still based on the contingencies for NVB. 

Ledoux's claim “Behaviorology is neither a part of, nor related in any meaningful way to, psychology of any kind!” (p. 182) (Ledoux, 2014), is necessary, but not sufficient to establish a natural science of human behavior. Since everyone in academia is busy with written, but not with spoken words, it hasn’t yet occurred to anyone that to become scientific about human behavior, we need an entirely new way of interacting. This writer’s view that we must talk is vindicated by this temporary defeat of behaviorology. For all their scientific rigor, behaviorologists haven’t analyzed their own adherence to the written word, which has strengthened instead of weakened the contingencies for NVB.