September 28, 2015

September 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my second response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). It amazes me that the first sentence of that paper produced so much writing in me. I like to write as it allows me to explore my verbal behavior in a manner that speaking often will not allow. When speaking allows the exploration of the chains of functionally antecedent events, I call that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I know what it takes to have SVB. Since most people miss the behavioral history which makes it possible, 

I used to explore SVB alone, by talking out loud and listening to myself while I speak. I made many audio-recordings of that and occasionally I still listen to them. This phase in my exploration of SVB paved the way for what I am doing right now: writing about it. For many years I have resisted writing about SVB as I found speaking about it more important. I still think that way, but am no longer against writing about it, as I read  behaviorist literature every day. Writing about behaviorism is my way of studying it and of producing an account of SVB which I find satisfying. 

As far as I am concerned, there are no hidden causal variables of SVB. I can have SVB all by myself as well as with you. To the extent that I have had and have SVB with you, I had and will continue to have SVB with myself. Since I have had more and more SVB with others, I have it more and more with myself, so much so that I can now write about it. In essence, I write to thank others for the fact that they have had and continue to have SVB with me. My writing then is a function of feeling gratitude and I enjoy it just as much as I do talking. 

I still want to write more in response to the paper’s first sentence “We begin by stipulating three central points upon which we and the broad consensus of commentators agree.” Agreeing that these written words have meaning is experiencing the reinforcing effects they produce. If the reader doesn’t experience such an effect, he or she loses interest. If we agree, there is nothing to say about it and we are still. Since stillness is often missing, we can conclude that there is often disagreement. Our disagreement is most apparent in the separation of our private speech from our public speech. If we agree, our private is part of our public speech, but if we disagree, there is a conflict between what we say to ourselves and what we say to others. In the former, we have SVB, but in the latter, we have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is called that way because the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener as a noxious stimulus. Agreeing requires us to pay attention to how we sound, not only to how other speakers sound, but to how we ourselves as speakers sound. If we don’t pay attention to how we ourselves sound while we speak, we will have NVB. The conflict in NVB is created and maintained by the separation between the speaker and the listener, which in turn separates our public speech from our private speech. In SVB, private speech is once again experienced and therefore understood as part of public speech.  Our conflicts end when the speaker’s sound changes.

The sense of oneness, which occurs as a consequence the speaker’s sound, makes us still and makes our public speech unnecessary. Our silence is possible due to the absence of verbal behavior. We can still do all sorts of things, but we neither talk with each other nor with ourselves. We can do what we do without having any covert self-talk.  This possibility, however, can only be achieved due to SVB and cannot be achieved by what is known as meditation. People have practiced many techniques to quiet down their self-talk, but these techniques never involved the exploration of the link between their public speech and their private speech. Only SVB can make us quiet and this is based on peaceful relationships. SVB private speech is a function of SVB public speech, but NVB private speech is function of NVB public speech. 

As most lawyers will tell you, agreement in writing is more important than a verbal agreement. I will tell you, however, such legal nonsense is a perversion of the possibility of vocal verbal agreement. It is possible that we are attuned to ourselves and to each other, but how can we be attuned to each other if we are not attuned to ourselves? In NVB, the other, the speaker, is more important than the listener. In NVB the speaker’s voice forces the listener to listen. In NVB the listener nonverbally submits to the forcefulness of the speaker, because he or she knows that he or she will be punished by the speaker if he or she doesn’t give in. In NVB the speaker dominates the listener, who, as a consequence, always has negative private speech. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker is attuned to the listener and the listener is attuned to the speaker. In other words, in SVB there is bi-directional communication, but in NVB there is uni-directional communication. I don’t think that this uni-directional communication is real communication. It is a form of violence which continues to justify many other forms of violence. We have not understood the difference between SVB and NVB because we have not, while we speak, been able to make the distinction. Only when we discriminate this difference while we speak, will we recognize that experiencing this difference precedes understanding this difference. Without experience we can’t understand the SVB/NVB distinction and so we must talk to explore this experience. Agreement with each other will release us from our verbal prison, which prevented agreement with ourselves. We cannot agree with ourselves as long as we cannot agree with each other. Only if we acknowledge the circumstances in which we agree what agreement means, will our agreement be meaningful. Such circumstances can be identified and maintained by SVB in which each speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. SVB speakers dissolve negative self-talk in the listeners who become utterly quiet and peaceful. The speaker’s goal in SVB is always the same: to stop talking. When we have said what can and must be said a silence will descent on us. Silence is the natural outcome of the behavioral cusp of listening to ourselves while we speak. Nothing reinforces us more than this silence.  This is an answer to the title question “What Do Reiforcers Reinforce?