June 17, 2016

June 17, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my third response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). The historian and philosopher of science Bachelard “argued that scientific progress is particularly dependent upon liberation of science from restrictive ways of previous thinking.” Behaviorists agree that “thinking” got started as public, overt speech, which receded to a covert, private level. We talk with ourselves in the exact same way as others have talked with us. 

To the extent we have been involved in and conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the so-called interaction in which the speaker separates him or herself from the listener, we accept this separation as normal and get imprisoned by “restrictive ways of previous thinking”, which are of course a function of “restrictive ways of previous” talking. 

We can only be “liberated” from our NVB private speech by another way of talking. There are only two different ways of talking: NVB and Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In SVB the speaker and the listener don’t become one, but are one. Moreover, in SVB they realize that unless one can be the other, because one is the other, there is no interaction! Stated differently, NVB is NOT interaction, but coercion oppression and abuse, which has continued in the name of interaction. 

There are no “restrictive ways of previous thinking” to be considered anymore after we have been introduced to SVB. Indeed, SVB public speech will always result into our positive private speech, that is, in non-restrictive, creative ways of thinking. As Bachelard didn’t know anything about the SVB/NVB distinction, he could not “propose practical steps that would be beneficial to overcome such barriers.”