December 13, 2015

December 13, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my thirteenth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (O’Donohue et al., 1998). The following statement is of great importance for what I have already addressed in yesterday’s writing. I mentioned that the speaker needs to take time to listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. In other words, the speaker must be alone, so that it becomes very easy for him or her to listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. Stated differently, the speaker must create his or her own environment to achieve Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) all by him or herself. This is not to say that he or she can’t have SVB with others, but that it is necessary to first achieve and explore SVB on our own. 

The group-talk we are used to is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and our pre-occupation with others prevents SVB. In NVB we, as speakers, want others to listen to us or, as listeners, we try very hard to listen to others, but, as speakers as well as listeners, our focus is on the other and not on ourselves. This communication conundrum, or rather, the simple fact that we have been conditioned by NVB, is the reason that the science of human behavior, behaviorism, until this very day is tossed out in favor of folk psychology.

Our NVB way of talking presumes an inner behavior-causing agent. Dismantling this myth of the inner-self-causation of behavior will only occur when we listen to ourselves. “The final obstacle, the assumption of folk psychology that science is best accomplished through group design research, contrasts with the radical behavioral emphasis on the use of single subjects experimental design.” By listening to yourself while you speak, while are alone, you will be able to create the “single subject experimental design,” that is needed to synchronize and join your speaking and listening behavior.

When you are by yourself there is no such thing as a speaker or a listener, there is only simultaneously: speaking and listening. In your conversations with others, however, you are rarely capable of joining speaking and listening behavior and therefore you are seldom experiencing the unity of the speaker and the listener. When you talk with yourself it is apparent to you that this joining can and should also happen when you speak with others. Moreover, when you achieve SVB by yourself you realize that others have prevented you from having it.