April 27, 2015

April 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

I am reading one more paper by Emilio Ribes. I don’t think I will read another one of his papers after this one. I remember that he said that it makes no sense to consider verbal and nonverbal behavior separately. Many other behaviorists have said the exact same thing. It seems to me as if he was repeating an old story. However, if we are going to engage in a conversation with each other, of course, we must differentiate between our verbal and our nonverbal behavior. It is because we nowadays seldom talk with each other, that writings like that begun to have a life of their own.


Writing about talking creates the illusion that we are talking, but it doesn’t help us understand the problems we are getting stuck with while we are talking. Ribes and Wittgenstein are people who are stuck and who also get others stuck with words. Unless we reconsider nonverbal behavior separately from verbal behavior, we get carried away by academic, scientific, political, cultural and linguistic jargon. The more we write, the less we talk. 

Today I respond to the paper “What is Defined in Operational Definitions? The Case of Operant Psychology” (2003). This paper by Ribes is about “the operational origin of the dichotomies between respondent and operant behavior, contingency-shaped and rule-governed behavior, private and public events, and, verbal and nonverbal behavior.” I skimmed through the paper very quickly and got to the last dichotomy, which is important for how we talk together. 

By mentioning Skinner, who was influenced by Stevens, who promoted Bridgman’s operational analysis as a general methodology of science, the reader is informed about the context of Bridgman’s analysis. Evidently, Bridgman was also impacted by Einstein’s relativity theory. He reasoned that “operational analysis was itself a relativistic enterprise constrained by the limits of human activity in relation to the physical world.” Not the conversation with his wife, children, students or colleagues, but “the conceptual revolution brought about in physics at the turn of the century and into the first quarter century of modern physics” was the context for his operational analysis. 

Let’s contrast this with the context in which I discovered the importance of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). These subsets of vocal verbal behavior began to occur to me because I hated how other people sounded. I got in trouble for addressing this matter again and again. It was initially a process of negative reinforcement, which led me to escape and avoid NVB. Relieved and satisfied to have accomplished that I produced SVB and began to pay attention to the environments in which this could occur. It happened out of necessity. I never choose or planned this. 

SVB only occurs when the contingency which makes it possible is accurately described. It was after many years, after I had stopped having contact with my family, after I had immigrated to the United States, after I had withdrawn from my graduate psychology study (ABD: All-But-Dissertation) that I discovered radical behaviorism and the terminology which explained what I had been going through. By discovering radical behaviorism I found scientific validation. 

Einstein highlighted “the true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about it.” I would say that we should observe, or rather, that we should listen to what a man says about it. I think that we can only find true meaning by what someone says about it. Although this mostly is not the case, I think that what we say about a term can be identical to what we do with it. If what we say about a term is identical to what we do with it, we achieve SVB, but if what we say about a term is different from what we do with it, we will engage in NVB. 

Based on the many seminars I have given over the years I believe that we mainly engage in NVB. Our problem is not that we can’t achieve SVB, but that we keep thinking that talking is not doing. Although Bridgman and Ribes in their writings “explicitly acknowledged that concepts were inevitably linked to human experience”, they consider the operational analysis of concepts as “not related to criteria regarding the public verification of properties or events.” In other words, like ‘true’ academics, they throw out the ordinary conversation.

Stevens who “adhered to the conception of truth by agreement” was into written, but not spoken agreement. Academically speaking (pun intended), the former is presumably more important than the latter. This has many negative consequences. When only in principle “there are no rules for prescribing, selecting and validating operations that identify the properties of objects or events to which concepts are applied”, it becomes difficult to talk about it. Of course, in day-to-day interactions there are rules “for prescribing, selecting and validating operations.” They may not be explicitly stated, but the “properties of objects or events to which concepts are applied” have to be identified. 

According to Stevens “the only difference is that scientist’s standards conform to those of his associates.” It is important to recognize that this so-called conformity only applies to what is written, to de-contextualized language. Thus, discussion between pragmatics and semantics leaves out the unacknowledged fact that, Bridgman and Stevens, like everyone else, mainly engage in NVB.

Indeed, “the operational definitions and the operational analysis of concepts are two different things.” Bridgman’s operational analysis, like my analysis of SVB and NVB, is “a posteriori identification of the physical and or verbal actions involved in formulating and applying a concept.” I can understand where Stevens is trying to go with “public science”, but I also agree with Bridgman that Stevens’ semantic approach is a dead end. Like Bridgman, Ribes and Skinner, I am only interested in the “operations (or physical and verbal actions) taking place when the concept is used.” A priori identification of concepts prevents SVB. Only an operational, but not a “functional analysis of concepts” can deal directly with our way of talking. We need to define concepts according to their use while we talk. As long as behaviorism wasn’t known we were able to avoid this. Skinner complimented Stevens’ writing and called it “a damn piece of nice work” and described it as “the best statement of the behavioristic attitude towards subjective terms now in print.” 

It should be clear here that Skinner was referring to Stevens’ writing as if he was commenting on the fact that Stevens was having SVB with him. If Stevens would have had SVB with him, Skinner might have been alerted to the fact that it had something to do with how we sound while we speak. Skinner’s voice sounds different than others. His vocal verbal behavior had more SVB instances than other scientists. His tone was almost always calm and pleasant. It is not coincidental that he never sounded angry, anxious, frustrated or negative. His knowledge about literature infuriates his opponents. There is reason why Skinner has such a peaceful tone, why Chomsky sounds so incendiary and why Pinker has such a pedantic and annoying voice. 

“Reproducibility of data” which is essential in operant methodology is equally important for SVB as for NVB. The terms SVB and NVB can be added to “reinforcement”, “extinction”, “discrimination”, “generalization” and “chaining”, Skinner’s list, which illustrates “the theoretical functions given to concepts defined as operation-outcome relations.” The two subsets of vocal verbal behavior in humans called SVB and NVB can also be extended to the behavior of nonverbal organisms and constitutes the “laws of behavior.” In nonverbal organisms we should talk about Sound Non-Verbal Behavior (SNVB) and Noxious Non-Verbal Behavior (NNVB). These distinctions will make us recognize that, although only humans have language, non-verbally they are equal to nonverbal animals. This focus on the nonverbal makes possible the much-needed alignment between our verbal and nonverbal behavior.