July 12, 2016

July 12, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my thirty-seventh response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). I absolutely disagree with the authors according to whom the “greatest epistemological barriers faced by radical behaviorism is that, like Darwinian evolutionary theory, it removes humans from a special place in the hierarchy of living organisms.” However, I do agree with them it has something to do with speech which maintains hierarchical relations. 

Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is the vocal verbal behavior in which both the speaker and the listener presumably know their place. In NVB the speaker doesn’t need to (and therefore often doesn’t) speak with the listener and is allowed to get away with speaking at the listener as he or she is of a higher social rank, smarter, better, more powerful then and superior to the listener. In other words, NVB is spoken communication that stimulates adherence to society’s hierarchies.  

In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), on the other hand, the speaker talks with the listener who is invited by the speaker’s sound to be a speaker as well. Moreover, as the listener becomes the speaker, the speaker can also become the listener. In SVB the speaker is “removed” from his or her “special place in the hierarchy of” the other communicators, as there is equality between the speaker and the listener. 

Radical behaviorism, like Darwinian evolutionary theory, makes us scientific about how we talk. NVB historically has been involved in the perpetuation of the superstitious belief in a behavior-causing self. Only SVB paves the way for natural, environmental explanations of behavior. Thus, in SVB the speaker no longer forces anything onto the listener.