February 19, 2016

February 19, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 193) Skinner writes “Perhaps the last stronghold of autonomous man is that complex “cognitive” activity called thinking. Because it is complex, it has yielded only slowly to explanations in terms of contingencies (italics added).” He is warning and educating readers about the apparent simplicity of explanations that are referring to an inner autonomous self which presumably causes behavior. He emphasizes complexity because he is unknowingly also debunking our course-grained way of talking which cannot allow this complexity to be properly communicated. 

Skinner is in my opinion trying to replace Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In NVB the speaker defends his thinking that is believed to be caused by a behavior-creating inner self, known as a person’s identity. In SVB, however, the speaker has no need for an identity as there is no aversive stimulation at all. 

We make a big deal about what we think, as we believe to be who we think we are. In SVB our identity is analyzed and resolved while we speak. We believe to be who we think we are and keep referring to “autonomous man” as we have been and have continued to be conditioned by NVB. We could not find out about the contingencies of which our behavior is a function long as NVB continued.  

NVB dispositionalizes and disembodies us, whereas SVB situationalizes us and attunes us to the environment within our own skin, our body. In NVB we get carried away by what we say and we disconnect from our experience while we speak as we are aversively affected by our environment, by others speakers.  When NVB is stopped in an environment which makes SVB possible we can at long last begin to acknowledge that there is neither a speaker nor a listener inside of us, only joined speaking and listening behavior in the here and now.

To put it in Skinner’s words “The picture which emerges from a scientific analysis is not of a body with a person inside, but of a body which is a person in the sense that it displays a complex repertoire of behavior (p.199).”  As stated, contingencies determine whether we will engage in SVB or in NVB. Moreover, “The contingencies are not stored; they have simply left a changed person (p. 196).” 

Only those who repeatedly explore the SVB/NVB distinction will be changed by it. The most important change occurs because of the conversation in which we can acknowledge that there is no self that causes our behavior. Of course, such a conversation needs to be ongoing for it to have an effect. Although we occasionally achieve SVB, we don’t have it in a skillful, deliberate and conscious manner.

We only have SVB in an accidental, once-in-a-blue-moon kind of fashion. Behaviorists who don’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction produce similar rates of NVB as non-behaviorists. The sentence “What is being abolished is autonomous man – the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literature of freedom and dignity (p. 200)” is clearly directed at what has been written. It is an argument which has its origin in NVB.  

Written words can be a function of SVB, but SVB is not learned by reading about it, but by engaging in it. In SVB we talk with each other and nothing needs to be “abolished” or “defended” as we all enjoy the absence of “a possessing demon.” Skinner urged us to dispossess autonomous man, so that we could “turn to the real causes of human behavior (p. 201)”, but he didn’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction.  Only if we talk with one another can we “turn from the inferred to the observable, from the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to the manipulable (p. 201).” This line of reasoning is a function of NVB. In SVB the observable, the natural, the manipulable are expressible and apparent. In SVB we are able to realize that NVB, our way of talking which was based on aversive contingencies, limited what we could see, verify and manipulate.  Thus, only SVB makes the contingency clear of which it is a function.