June 6, 2015

June 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Please take off your spiritual hat and put on your scientific hat. This is the fourth part of my response to Radical Behaviorism and Buddhism: Complementarities and Conflicts” by Diller and Lattal (2008).  Before I go further into the discussion of this paper, I want to record that an unusual event is taking place while I am writing this. It has happened before, but it is happening again, and because it has only happened a couple of times,, four times at the most, I notice it and find it worth writing about. Since I am responding to this paper and since I have so much time on my hands, I spend a lot of time writing. Also, as I am a slow reader and as my response is spread out over a couple of days, there are various journal entries of it. I mostly write in the morning, but I also write during the day or in the evening or during the night.  When I start writing it usually gets the date of that day, but if a second or third entry follows that same day, in the afternoon , in the evening or at night, I am inclined to put the date of the following day on it. Consequently, it can happen,, as it is happening right now, that I am three days ahead of myself. There is a sense of satisfaction in running ahead of time, a feeling of luxury, expansion and accomplishment . Of course, I know what date it is today and this is just a game I am playing, but I could decide not write anything for three days and there would be no gap in my journal entries. I also noticed that my entries are longer than usual,, sometimes 6 or 7 pages long. I attribute this to this letter type which seems to cover the pages quicker than other letter types, I used before. Furthermore, I have a sense I am on track because I have worked ahead. I am certainly not behind. I am not much into planning, but somehow I have planned ahead and it is affecting other decisions as well. Also in other areas of my life I feel I am on track.  Of course, all of this is because I have so much time to spend and few obligations. The semester has come to an end. I have one job as a care aid two days a week and I may get more work, but now I can spend lots of time by myself. 

The fact that Buddhists still find it worth mentioning that “information about the self (or attributes of the self) can be understood only through an analysis of the environment in which it is conceptualized (e.g. an individual’s relationship with others)”should make no difference to behaviorists.  Buddhists only want to gather scientific facts to prop up their pre-scientific views. As long as behaviorists are deluded by Buddhists or others who try to use behaviorism to prove how scientific they are,, they aren't going to gain any popularity. If on the other hand behaviorists succeed in communicating that it cannot be understood in terms of what people are familiar with, then people will be more benefitted by it. 

My analysis is like this: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) can only be understood as the absence of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB ).  Every time people bring in NVB , SVB is made impossible. We really don’t have much SVB as we can’t have much SVB, because we still accept this ridiculous and confusing going back and forth between SVB and NVB as if it is something meaningful,, as if it adds something useful. 

It is harsh,, but nothing useful is added by NVB. It is more of the same old nonsense, which stunts human development. Once we know SVB, there is no need to stop NVB.  It is the lack of knowledge, that is,, it is the behaviorist disinterest in the application of their own discipline to the complicated nature of the relationship between the speaker and the listener ,which made them unpopular when they convey behaviorism to people who are ignorant about it.  

There is no “higher state of being” but a better way of interacting is possible and urgently needed.  However, scholarly behaviorists and non-behaviorists alike are not going to be interested in this as long as they remain preoccupied with “the impermanent nature of things.” Skinner comes closest to SVB when he describes the self as “an organized system of responses,” and suggests that “behavior varies between interactions with family and close friends as a function of discriminative control exerted by each” (underlining added).  

However, in terms of mentalism, there is no difference between the Buddhist and the Western concept of self, but in behaviorism, there is no self , there never was a self. “The Buddhist concept of self” is not and cannot be concordant with behaviorism. To state something idiotic like that is like saying it doesn’t matter whether the earth is flat or round , that flatness is just another form or roundness, that flatness can inform us about roundness. The flat earth theory was wrong and the round earth theory was right, and the facts speak for themselves. The same is true for SVB. I am not trying to convince when I write the facts of SVB speak for themselves. One can  see and hear immediately that SVB is better than NVB. 

The “subject/object split” which is only theoretically not there in Buddhism or in behaviorism only dissolves during SVB, but continues as long as NVB continues. Who cares if we are dealing with “a functional definition of the self “or a structural definition of the self, when we still get stuck in our conversations with our definitions of a self? This is going to continue as long as SVB and NVB have not been properly addressed.  Behaviorists fool themselves by assuming that their functional definition of self, which supposedly is supported by Buddhism, “supersedes” the structural definition.