June 14, 2015

June 14, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing will be my fifth response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. In yesterday’s writing I ended with a sense of puzzlement about Bass who apparently sees no problem in describing the workings of Zen-tactics as a form of advertising. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) we find out that “behavior under control of vicariously established reinforcers”, with which we have “never had any direct contact,” leads to chasing phony needs and forgetting about our real needs. The spiritual goods are never delivered and talk which maintains belief in enlightenment is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

Skinner described Zen as “extracting the essentials” and depicted a Zen archer as someone who “learns to minimize the particular features of a single instance.” The archer is said to “transcend the immediate situation” to become “detached from it.” His careful words describe Zen as a practice of “attenuated stimulus control.”Bass, however, insists that “Zen meditation does not minimize all features of immediate situations; it attenuates and eventually eliminates a class of controls: verbal behavior.” This is a ridiculous claim, but it seems to explain why Zen practice has led to good archers and calligraphers,, but not to great speakers. Tokusan, one of the greatest Zen masters, is reported to have said “There are no words or phrases in Zen.” 

Skinner’s attempt on the other hand, at altering verbal behavior was to avoid “distortion due to intervening verbal linkage.” This cannot be compared to Zen’s absurd goal of eliminating all verbal behavior. If we look at the workings of NVB, it is easy to see that Zen continues a lineage of hierarchical uni-directional conversation. Zen masters are never really talking with anyone,, they always speak at others, who are not allowed to speak with them. Zen is based on obedience and on coercion, which are the characteristics of NVB. 

“An entirely different matter is Skinner’s “Vocabulary with precise stimulus control” that is “used within a given universe of discourse”, which must be a “special scientific vocabulary” that is “relatively free of responses under other sorts of stimulus control.” Skinner’s version of “the original state of affairs” is not the same as Zen. His is a scientific language, which depicts how human behavior works, a language, of  attachment and oneness with what is happening. The language of Zen, by contrast, is authoritarian,, it has to be, because eliminating all verbal behavior doesn’t  tell us about how it works. Zen forces us into sensory deprivation and asks us to stick our heads in the sand. 

Bass declares Zen is not merely “attenuated verbal stimulus control “as in the “concentration on one single word or image” also known as mantra’s which are believed to originate in India. Likewise, our NVB is exclusive, because communicators get stuck with one word, one topic, one theory or one way of viewing things. SVB, however, is inclusive of all perspectives which are fluidly woven together. In NVB the speaker, sternly sticks to his or her topic and dominates listeners verbally and non-verbally. Compare that with Zen for a moment. In Zen we aren't even allowed to have one topic; Zen is really the ultimate form of oppression. 

 In Zen what they call “stationary” is not merely “weakened stimulus control”, but is said to be "verbally unmediated attention.” Bass describes a perception “which is very clear but is undifferentiated in the sense that it is devoid of verbal components.” As most of us probably know Skinner (1945) defined verbal behavior as mediated behavior, so if it is true that Zen clarity is “verbally unmediated” then Bass’s verbal behavior is not operant behavior. 

What is meant then by “verbally unmediated attention?” Skinner treated the issue of meaning as a matter of discovering the controlling variables of a verbal response (1945).  He refined his definition of verbal behavior “as the behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons” by describing mediation,, that is,, the behavior of the listener, who “responds in ways which have been conditioned precisely in order to reinforce the behavior of the speaker.”(1957). If there is, as Bass claims,, no verbal response, then there are no controlling variables and there is no meaning.Thus, Zen is meaningless...

The aforementioned ties into Zen’s use of “unsolvable meditative riddles” called “Koans”. Presumably all verbal behavior is to be extinguished. Zen hammers on the fact that all talking or any kind of verbal mediation must stop,, as it aims to increase a person’s ability to “observe the world as it is.”   In terms of speaking and listening Zen presumably increases listening by decreasing speaking. This is an old and failed strategy, which has only perpetuated NVB. In SVB we listen while we speak, that is, our speaking and our listening behaviors are joined, but in NVB they are disconnected. 

Supposedly, in Zen we can become enlightened, totally conscious,, 100% listening, by ignoring the fact that we are speaking. The only speaker allowed is the master. He or she dominates the conversation with questions which can never get resolved and which stop the Zen student from asking. Why do Zen students even want to achieve a “verbally free, contingency-shaped” behavior?   Verbal behavior is experienced as a burden. Since we don’t know how to maintain SVB, we are imprisoned by words, that is, we have NVB. 

The following quote deserves careful attention. It gives directions on the use of the word “No” which one says to oneself, while meditating, in order to “eliminate verbal mediation.” Supposedly, one doesn’t say “No” to one’s feelings. “The basic form of abuse of “No” is to interpret and practice it in a negative way, using it to make the mind blank and shut out reality instead of using it to make the mind clear and open to reality” (Cleary, 1997) (underlining added). From a behavioral perspective we know that unobservable private mental processes don’t account for how we behave. Skinner often repeated that the problem with mentalism and those who believe to have a mind, is  that they think that their behavior is caused by what they feel or want,, when in reality it is always caused by environmental variables. Also the “verbal intruders” in the meditator can be traced to these environmental events. The fact that Zen masters resist describing Zen in an attempt to “minimize the effects of verbal behavior” has the same effect as when someone tells us not to think of pink elephants.  Supposedly, " Zen masters create a context in which Zen occurs if the monk is prepared “that is, not speaking. 

In SVB the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. In SVB, the listener hears the speaker’s sound and understands what he or she says because of how he or she sounds. The sound of the speaker in SVB has a special quality, which allows the speaker to speak as clearly as possible. Because the speaker listens to him or herself, he or she relaxes into his or her natural sound. The listener is pleasurably stimulated by the voice of the speaker. “A Zen Buddhist might say that the goal is to hear the sound, not the echo.” What such a master is saying is that the disciple should listen to him, but not to himself. This is another version of NVB in which other-listening makes self-listening impossible. In SVB, by contrast, self-listening includes other-listening. When we don’t or can’t listen to ourselves, how are we supposed to be able to listen to others? 

In Zen, the master talks at not with the disciple,, who is to eliminate his or her verbal behavior. In SVB we don’t fixate on the verbal, as that changes the sound of our voice. The listener reinforces the sound of the speaker as a meditative way of talking unfolds in which we say new things. SVB makes and keeps us conscious, but NVB is a mechanical  and unconscious way of communicating.