March 18, 2016

March 18, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Humble Behaviorism” Neuringer (1991) acknowledges that “There has arisen, however, a correlated tendency to maintain that “our” language is better than others, for example, the language of philosophers, Freudian psychologists, and cognitive psychologists, to name a few.” Of course, the behaviorist’ language is better than others as it is the only language that accurately describes the science of human behavior. The fact that all sorts of unscientific ways of talking have continued unabated is because writing is considered as the foundation for scientific language, for behaviorists as well as non-behaviorists. Furthermore, when a speaker speaks in such a way that he or she is better than the listener, he or she will aversively affect that listener. This is a typical example of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which has been going on forever to establish and maintain hierarchical ‘relationships’ in which the roles of speakers and listeners are fixed. Actually, hierarchy always signifies the absence of relationship; in NVB the speaker speaks at and not with the listener. Only in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), there is bi-directional interaction due to the turn-taking that goes on between the speaker and the listener. For those who know the difference between SVB and NVB, it is evident that NVB is inherently biased and therefore unscientific as the speaker coerces the listener, no matter what he or she is saying.