November 11, 2015

November 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my eight response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). The authors devote the last section of their paper to “limits of the pragmatic criterion in behavior analysis”. This tells me they themselves  aren’t pragmatic. They are still struggling with Skinner’s “generic definition” which “provides for instrumental criterion in 1945.” Skinner wrote “What matters to Robinson Crusoe is not whether he is agreeing with himself but whether he is getting anywhere with his control over nature” (Skinner, 1945, p. 293). Remarkably, they don’t go at all into the fact that Crusoe was talking out loud with himself and that this was made possible by the behavioral his history of talking with others. 

Even though he was all alone on his island, Crusoe, by talking out loud with himself, made his private speech public. Interestingly, the authors do mention that “Skinner suggested that, even in the absence of verbal interaction with others (and, therefore, in the absence of public agreement), the validity of an explanation could be checked”, but they don’t mention anything about the fact that a person’s private speech is of course a function of that person’s public speech. Instead they write “Whether or not it is possible to achieve agreement in the absence of verbal interaction is a question that merits discussion, but to reject the requirement of public observation should not mean that the coherence criterion could be neglected.” Skinner had something in common with Crusoe and that is why he used him as an example to explain his views. He knew the advantage of being alone and (like me) he “checked” the “validity” of all his explanations on his own before he revealed them to others. 

Skinner was able to practice self-management as he had a high rate of SVB in his behavioral history. These high rates of SVB continue in the absence of others in private speech and are automatically reinforced. Skinner didn’t need those who knew less than him, who had more NVB and couldn’t achieve agreement with him. This is the situation anyone with high rates of SVB finds him or herself in: one is liberated from the large NVB crowd.

Let there be no question about why I cherry-pick from the behaviorist literature: I only choose what serves my purpose. Had Skinner used other heroes like Crusoe more often and had he written more books like Walden II, radical behaviorism might have reached a broader audience. However, he didn’t experience any limitation to his pragmatic approach and that is why he stuck with it and kept on going. His work, like mine, kept on growing and growing during his life time. Seeing this development was his biggest joy. “It is, indeed, an a posteriori conclusion generated by theories selected according to their effect upon the scientist or professional who is conducting the behavioral study that will promote cultural survival.”

Only after we come back again to SVB can we realize we were involved in NVB. NVB goes on so often, but we remain unaware of it. Only when NVB was stopped can we explore and reap the benefits of SVB. Certainly, this doesn’t happen often, but that is our problem. It could happen effortlessly and repeatedly, but we don’t know how to make it happen. I write to explain to the reader that SVB requires the absence of aversive stimulation. Only those who speak English understand English and “only those who share the values of a behavior-analytic culture will agree.” Only those who engage in SVB will agree with SVB. It is sufficient to know that SVB is possible. 

Unlike these authors I think that “The effectiveness criterion” does “take into consideration the preliminary role that basic beliefs or assumptions play in controlling the use of effectiveness as means of assessing the validity of an explanation.” These authors reason from a NVB point of view, while Skinner reasons from a SVB point of view. They are silly to accuse Skinner of being “dogmatic.”  Since they are stuck in the same NVB boat as Hayes, they are looking for something to base their argument on. All they can do is yank the reader around with more writings from others who disagree with Skinner. Yet, to carve out their own niche, they state “Nevertheless, Hayes (1993) is not here taking into account that, for Skinnerian behaviorism, analytic objectives or prior goals are not prediction and control as such, but a set of specific beliefs about its subject matter: behavior.” Since this is true, Hayes was wrong. In my analysis, Skinner has more SVB than the majority of behaviorists and the authors of this paper have more SVB than Hayes.

In both SVB and NVB we are dealing with “a set of specific beliefs about” how we talk. If this writing was a real conversation, mentioning objectives which can be found “throughout Skinner’s work” would involve increased rates of SVB. Although he didn’t know the SVB/NVB distinction, Skinner’s references to verbal behavior were “clearly defined, explicitly addressed, and frequently recognized as arbitrary (perhaps the only exception to this is the reference to the “natural lines of fracture along which behavior and environment actually break”) [Skinner, 1935/1961b, p. 347]).

In Skinner’s statement about Crusoe, “what was being rejected was” NOT “a criterion (adopted by methodological behaviorism) of intersubjective agreement based on public observation.” Unknowingly, Skinner was asserting the validity of SVB, which neither requires “agreement based on public observation,” nor agreement based on private observation. As there is no separation between speaker and listener, the issue of agreement doesn’t arise in SVB. Crusoe taught Skinner to keep NVB at a minimum.