September 21, 2015

September 21, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my third response to “Establishing the Macrobehavior of Ethical Self-Control in Arrangement of Macro Contingencies in Two Macro Cultures” (2014) by Aécio Borba, Emmanuel Zagury Tourinho and Sigrid S. Glenn. Although in yesterday’s writing I mentioned the auditory illusion, on which I shall write some more later, my writing remains under control of the reading of this paper. The authors wrote “however, it should be noted that whenever a person’s behavior produces long-term consequences to many members of the culture, we are talking about ethical self-control. As in individual self-control situations, the delayed effect is central to the definition.” This criterion, “the delayed effect is central to the definition” indicates that the authors have an inadequate understanding of the verbal behavior, that is, the public and the private speech, which has to be involved in the conditioning and the maintenance of “ethical self-control.”

The centrality of delayed effects is a consequence of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), by contrast, the listener is aware of the immediate effects of the speaker on him or herself. Without this immediate effect there cannot be any “ethical self-control” in the future. The absence of “ethical self-control” is a consequence of our NVB way of talking in which the benefits are believed to occur later. There can and will only be benefits of “ethical self-control” later, if there are benefits of “ethical self-control” now. In other words, immediate consequences of “ethical self-control” are the necessary condition for “ethical self-control” to be possible later on.  Postponement of happiness in favor of a belief in some future benefit has befooled mankind for a long time. The auditory illusion, called “ethical self-control” has remained only wishful thinking, but it has been proven again and again that immediate consequences drive behavior. Only SVB has immediate positive consequences on the listener. 

“In ethical self-control, the adjective ethical describes any behavior that benefits the culture, i.e., produces delayed positive reinforcers (or removes/avoids aversive stimuli) for many members of the culture, in current or subsequent generations.” This clarification shows the authors are not paying attention to how things are said. They are eager to define the word ethical. This verbal focus obfuscates the nonverbal auditory illusion. Reinforcers are always delayed only in NVB, which makes people hope and work for a better future, which often never materializes. In SVB, on the other hand, there are immediate and long-term reinforcing consequences. The long-term benefits of SVB are embedded in and made possible by immediate benefits.  Developmentally and throughout the lifespan nonverbal shaping result into verbal behavior (“ethical self-control”). 

The authors link “ethical self-control” with the person who is benefitted from this behavior. As is common with those who are determined by NVB, the person who is benefitted from ethical behavior is someone other than the ethically behaving person. In NVB the speaker focuses on the other, on the listener, on someone else than the speaker him or herself and not, as Skinner has called it, on the speaker-as-own-listener. In SVB, however, it is the speaker-as-own-listener who practices the “ethical self-control.” In SVB the speaker experiences immediate reinforcement and this will set the stage for reinforcement in the future. This different way of speaking which makes reinforcement in the future possible has yet to be more accurately described. “Therefore, we do not use ethical to characterize values or patterns of behavior that are reinforced in a culture as adequate or good behavior (for this, see Skinner, 1953/1965). Thus, the term here does not imply a judgment of value on behavior, but rather identifies the beneficiary of the behavior.” To the extent that the speaker experiences immediate reinforcing effects as his or her own listener, the listener who is not the speaker will be benefitted by the “ethical self-control” of this speaker.

After I was done teaching my class, one of the students stayed behind to ask a question. She was very serious. She wanted to know about her identity, her true self and wondered how this ties in with SVB. She was thinking out loud, she listened to herself while she spoke and she answered her own question. By exploring SVB, she concluded there is no self, but only an ongoing flux of stimulation. She was delighted and relieved to recognize that she is never the same and acknowledged that our usual way of talking,  doesn’t permit this. Moreover, she discovered that people like her would have to talk more often to be able to hear themselves, while others would have to talk less in order to have SVB. I confirmed her discovery by smiling and by nodding and she went on to say that SVB completely changes who she believes herself to be. She also recognized that, in SVB, her way of thinking about herself was determined by how she talked and not, as she used to think, in NVB, the other way around. 

As this example of the workings of SVB makes clear, the term “ethical self-control”, which these authors are trying to define “does not imply a judgment of value on behavior, but rather identifies the beneficiary of the behavior,” that is, in SVB, the speaker identifies him or herself as his or her own listener. The listener in the same skin as the speaker is benefitted from SVB. The speaker-as-own-listener is simultaneously a subjectively experienced and objectively experienced phenomenon. By nodding and by smiling, I was able to non-verbally affirm what she was saying to herself and to me verbally and non-verbally.  Nobody cares about “delayed positive reinforcers” in the future if there is SVB, but in NVB, we are stressing, fighting and arguing for something which never comes. Supposedly, in NVB we will have things our way in the future, but the fact is that we never do. NVB is an auditory illusion, in which we, in order to make others believe in us, try very hard to believe in ourselves. In SVB, the often talked about belief in ourselves is not a point of discussion at all. As long as we keep acting the way in which we talk, we don’t and can't speak with our natural sound, which expresses our well-being. I engineer a new culture by introducing people to SVB. If we are going to experience well-being while we talk, we are developing the repertoire we need to be able to have SVB in the future.