March 12, 2015

March 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

In today’s writing this writer comments on “Separate Disciplines: The Study of Behavior and the Study of the Psyche” (1986) by Fraley and Vargas. They address the incompatibility of the study of behavior with the study of the psyche and want behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, to be completely separate from psychology. Besides this call for this long overdue parting, their paper is also an attempt to shed new light on the minimally discussed, but crucially important fact that disciplines are “defined through technical exercises” but “function through exercises of political power.” By asserting themselves as a separate discipline, “a number of difficult issues” are believed to be “confronted.” However, this writer wonders if they dealt with the most important issue: how do we talk about this matter? It doesn’t look like it. 

No doubt they mus thave talked about it among themselves, but how behaviorologist talk with those who are not familiar with this new discipline is hardly even mentioned. This writer addresses a different way of communicating directly, because vocal verbal behavior that is involved in “political power” is as incompatible with vocal verbal behavior involved in discussing “laboratory data”, as behaviorology is incompatible with the contemporary psychology. The assertion of behaviorology as a separate discipline starts, but doesn’t end by giving it name. 

As this writer firmly believes that behaviorology is not merely a toothless paper tiger, sucking on, hiding under and hanging onto psychology-mommy’s dried up tit, he insists that unscientific talk, which he calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), must be permanently separated from Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), which is the only scientific way of communicating. 

     

It is because the distinction between SVB and NVB hasn’t been made, that psychology can continue to claim its politically correct, but false scientific status. Behaviorists and later, behaviorologists, like Fraley and Vargas, may not yet have paid much attention to how they speak, but at least their research roots out the ubiquitous but detrimental illusionary notion of causation of behavior by an internal agent. Historically, behaviorists and behaviorologists have been marginalized, because they didn’t and couldn’t cave in to this widely accepted explanatory fiction. Although most of the behaviorist's attention mainly goes to autism, it is no coincidence that the behaviorist’s success is primarily in improving spoken communication.  

The label “behaviorology” signifies the “need for a term descriptive of our science in its broad sense” (italics added). It would be ridiculous to say that biology is a science only for biologist. It is equally silly to say that behaviorology is only for behaviorologists. Behaviorology as well as biology are two scientific disciplines which can benefit everyone. The need for behaviorology to be a descriptive science lies in the fact that it deals directly with behavior, particularly, our vocal verbal behavior. Psychology’s patchwork of different perspectives is further removed from SVB than behaviorism and behaviorology. Those who have explored SVB, agree that behaviorism and behaviorology explain and validate it. 

To scientifically attend to how we talk, we must have a descriptive science of behaviorology. Only a descriptive science can give us the much-needed expressive, illustrative, vivid environmental account of what actually takes place when we talk. Certainly we can write about it, but we must also talk about it. Our written accounts have led to all sorts of dead ends, because they couldn’t accurately account for how we communicate. Presumably, all our different written theories each held a piece of the puzzle, but the conversations in which these pieces fit together couldn’t happen.

Behaviorologists should know by now people’s “commitment” was never, as many continue to believe, in “cognitivism.” This writer claims it was never even the content that made people repeat the same falsehoods, rather it was the context in which people communicated, which caused them to talk and write the way they did and do. As the context, the environment in which we talked wasn't addressed, behaviorists, behaviorologists as well as cognitivists, non-behaviorist and non-behaviorologists have continued to talk in the same way they have always done. That is, NVB has carried on unabated and nothing was done to replace this problem behavior. 

Although research has focused on behavior, vocal and sub-vocal verbal behavior, which precedes anything written, is left out. Consequently, we still live with the illusion that something written can inform us about how we talk, when the exact opposite is true: only something spoken, in private or in public speech, can set the stage for what we write. We put the horse behind the wagon if we assume that something written can inform us about how we speak. It is against the natural order of things. Unless we first talk about it, privately with ourselves or publicly with others, our writing will disconnect us from ourselves and from each other. This is exactly what has happened, as our writing became more important than what we said. SVB reverses this detrimental process, which undermines our human relationship. Our predetermined way of talking that resulted from what was written and what was read, is NVB, which doesn’t inspire, stimulate or energize us. Before we can “agree” on behavior as our subject matter, we must first “agree” to focus on our verbal behavior as our subject matter, so that at long last we can acknowledge the immense difference between SVB and NVB. Without SVB it is unlikely behaviorology is going to prosper.