August 7, 2016

August 7, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my ninth response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). The distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) can solve problems which otherwise cannot be solved. Radical behaviorists have railed against mentalism, but weren’t successful in changing old beliefs. 

Everyone believes the world is flat, that is, most people have continued to believe behavior is caused by an inner self. In their zeal to “discover the variables controlling what has been said” radical behaviorists have paid more and more attention to textual than to vocal verbal behavior. 

It has never occurred to anyone that being a radical behaviorist or a mentalist actually involves two entirely different ways of talking. I am a different kind radical behaviorist, as I couldn’t adhere to society’s hierarchy, which is maintained by NVB, the language of coercion. 

My discovery of SVB became possible, because, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to fit into a society in which behavior is generally controlled by forcefulness and effort. To the extent that radical behaviorists still go on believing in coercive behavioral control, they will not be able to have the SVB that is needed to practice their science. 

Day, who, like Skinner, had much more SVB than most other radical behaviorists, states “the meaningfulness of psychological and mental terms provides no insuperable problem, provided the verbal practices of both speaker and hearer have been shaped by overlapping verbal communities.” Although the speaker and hearer may speak the same language, they still continue to have different levels of SVB and NVB. 

The rates of SVB and NVB within one’s family sets the stage for how one later on experiences SVB and NVB in other families, school, the workplace and society at large. “Meaningfulness of psychological and mental terms provide no insuperable problem” as long as we are able to engage in SVB, but NVB is guaranteed to perpetuate mankind’s misery. 

The meaning of psychological and scientific terms cannot be clarified as NVB separates the speaker from hearer. Only during SVB can the speaker and hearer unify as they take turns and as their speaking and listening behavior remain joined.  Assessing “the observable (not necessarily publicly observable) events that act as discriminative stimuli in control of emission of the term” is only possible in SVB.

Accurate assessment of events which are only privately observable is made impossible by our NVB which excludes our private speech from our public speech. Private as well as public speech is viewed as caused by environmental variables while we engage in SVB. Consequently, there is no separation between our private speech and public speech in SVB. 

As our private speech is disconnected from our public speech in NVB, this private speech takes on a life of its own, stimulating the belief in the internal causation of behavior. Although most radical behaviorists have had the conversation in which the separation of private speech and public speech was temporarily lifted, they have never pursued this,  like I did, as an essentially important separate means of investigation. 

One of the things people, particularly those who are suffering from mental health problems, repeatedly say when they embark on SVB is that they find this very meaningful. “This kind of analysis is what Skinner has in mind when he speaks of “operational definition” (1945, p.271).” (italics are added as Skinner mostly had mostly SVB). 

To listen to our own sound while we speak is the operational definition of SVB. To explore SVB, we must let the listener speak and allow the speaker to listen. When we do that we realize that there is no listener and there is no speaker, but there is only speaking and listening. We discover meaning and agree with each other that meaning is discovered when each speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks.