December 30, 2015

December 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

Here are some of my comments on “The Concept of Reinforcement: Explanatory or Descriptive” by Tonneau (2008). Philosophical discussions about description versus explanation have been going on since time memorial and will never be resolved by written words. Only spoken communication provides the situation in which we can be attuned to one another. The sound of our voices is a moment-to-moment indication of how our conversation is going. 

During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) hair-splitting about whether reinforcement is explanatory or descriptive comes to an end. “Of course, one does not explain a phenomenon (B) by describing it; rather, what one must do in order to explain B is to describe a phenomenon A distinct from B.” The sound produced by the speaker elicits a positive or a negative emotion in the listener. 

The speaker’s voice has an appetitive or an aversive effect on the listener. The speaker produces SVB in the former, but in the latter, he or she produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Thus, the SVB speaker produces a sound which is different from the NVB speaker. It is by describing the difference between SVB and NVB that these mutually exclusive response classes are explained. 

No matter how well somebody else may be able to describe the SVB/NVB distinction, your own experience explains it best. Only when you listen to yourself while you speak can you sense your experience of both SVB as well as NVB. To get that experience, it doesn’t even matter how well you describe it or explain it, what matters is that you listen to it and hear the sound of it.

You will not have SVB as long as you remain verbally fixated. SVB is not a matter of explaining or describing things exactly, what matters is to hear the sound of your description or your explanations, regardless of how incomplete or inaccurate they may be. It is true that your descriptions and explanations will make more sense to you the more you are able to achieve SVB. 

It will be apparent that none of what you say makes sense to your as long as you keep producing NVB. Whether you produce SVB or NVB is subjectively experienced by you. Your body responds differently to one or the other; it is happy, relaxed, energized and conscious in SVB, but in NVB it feels tense, tired, drained, stressed, agitated and stuck. Moreover, you will find, that is, in retrospect, that during NVB you dissociate from your body. Each time you engage in NVB you disembody your communication, but each time you engage in SVB you really embody what you say.