May 20, 2015

May 20, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Today’s writing is my third response to “Behaviorism and the Stages of Scientific Activity” by J. Moore (2010). I am well aware that it sounds pedantic to claim that we don’t know how to maintain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), that is, scientific vocal verbal behavior. We have acquired scientific written verbal behavior, but in our way of talking we have yet to become scientific. Scientists and scholars continue to write and read about events they would much rather talk about. However, they have been unsuccessful in talking about it. Many books and papers would never have been written, if we could talk properly about the events that are written about. It is like the difference between texting versus calling someone. Sending a text message gives the texter/speaker, a sense of control over the behavior of the reader/listener and this is why people rather text each other than talk with each other. The same is true for writing books or papers. The authors, Skinner included, wish to stick to their talking points and only bring those across. As such they would like to claim something that cannot be refuted by any reader.

The forcefulness of an argument in a conversation is always accompanied by an aversively-sounding voice. Listeners want to escape from such a noxious stimulus, because it threatens them. Thus, in real conversation, a speaker’s speaking is only as good as a listener’s ability to hear and understand what the speaker is saying; reinforcement of the speaker depends on the listener.

Verbal behavior, as Skinner defined it, is “behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons” (Skinner, 1957)The fact that the writer wants to control the behavior of the reader or that the speaker wishes to control the behavior of the listener seems to oppose Skinner’s definition of verbal behavior. Skinner’s definition, which was further elaborated with the additional words that this other person, who reinforces the speaker “must be specifically trained to provide such reinforcement,” tells us that the slave is only capable of reinforcing the slave owner to the extent that he or she was specifically trained to provide such reinforcement. Let there be no mistake about this: the slave was beaten, tortured, humiliated, threatened etc. until he or she obeyed and mediated the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) of his or her master. 

Stated differently, the behavior of the slave owner didn’t lead to an emitted response, but to an elicited response, that is, it resulted in an increase of respondent behavior of the slave. Since the behavior of the slave owner is not operant behavior in the sense that it was reinforced by an emitted response of the slave, it shouldn’t be considered as verbal behavior. Moreover, since the slave is only to behave non-verbally, to do the work and not to behave verbally in any significant way, this slave owner’s way of talking is different from when he or she is talking with a family member. This example makes clear how the slave owner might have SVB with his wife and children, while having NVB with his or her slaves. Similarly, Nazi death camp guards were able to maintain normal family relations while gassing millions of Jews in the concentration camps during the Second World War in Germany. Since the behavior of the slave is respondent behavior and since the threat of the slave owner’s coercive behavior can only be decreased by the slave’s repeated slavish responses, this behavior of the slave is reinforced by negative reinforcement. It occurs because the aversive stimulus, the threat of the punishing presence of the slave owner, will be reduced once the slave exhibits his or her slavish behavior. Furthermore, the slave is likely to have this behavior more often in the future, because he or she wants to avoid or as much as possible remove any of these negative consequences. And, he or she wants to survive. 

Although perhaps less life threatening in everyday conversations, the NVB of the speaker elicits primarily respondent behavior in the listener. Only in SVB is the speaker reinforced by the mediating responses of the listener evoked by the speaker. Poincare (1913), who also had a big influence on Skinner’s way of thinking states “Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us anything new. It alone can give us certainty….Merely to observe is not enough. We must use our observations and to do that we must generalize…The scientist must set in order. Science is build up with facts as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.” The houses we built, the relationships we had, were based on NVB and just “heaps of stones”. Imaginary bridges, built with NVB, were doomed to collapse, because they couldn’t hold the traffic of so-called relationship, in which the speaker dominated, oppressed and exploited the listener.

Like Skinner, I plant my tongue in my cheek, because I “proceed in a rather Baconian fashion.” The SVB/NVB distinction doesn’t owe anything to any other theoretical approach, not even behaviorism. Behaviorism represents me and I am not needed to represent it. I  am satisfied and reinforced by “manipulating variables selected for study through a common sense exploration of the field.”

To engage in SVB is to experiment and will give the experimenter a certainty which could not have been obtained in any other way. Skinner who boldly stated “Behavior can only be satisfactorily understood by going beyond the facts themselves…Theories are based upon facts; they are statements about organizations of facts….With proper operational care they need nothing more than that.” In SVB, what we say matters – because   of how we say it. It is a spoken theory. Thus, SVB is not, “any explanation of an observed fact which appeals to events which take place somewhere else, at some other level of observation, described in different terms, and measured, if at all, in different dimensions.” Thus, SVB has nothing to do with written verbal behavior. Written theories which refer to events in “the real nervous system, the conceptual system, or the mind” have “led to the continued use of methods which should be abandoned.” Moreover, the small amount of talking that went into teaching these nonsensical theories “which have not stimulated good research on learning and misrepresented the facts to be accounted for” and “gave false assurances about the state of our knowledge”, was mainly based on NVB. SVB questions and debunks these theories. It is as if Skinner was speaking about SVB, when he stated “But such a construction will not refer to another dimensional system and will not therefore fall within our present definition. It will not stand in the way of our search for functional relations because it will arise only after relevant variables have been found and studied. Though it may be difficult to understand, it will not be easily misunderstood, and it will have none of the objectionable effects to the theories here considered. We do not seem to be ready for theory in this sense” (underlining added). I don’t agree with Skinner that we are not ready for such theory. SVB is a matter of experiencing verbal behavior, understanding it is secondary. Once we have SVB, it is effortlessly self-evident and reinforcing. We are not ready because of our NVB. SVB, by contrast, heralds a new era in scientific activity.