November 8, 2015

November 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my fifth response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). I am writing these words as I am thinking about what many others have also been thinking about. My thinking, however, is a function of what I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), whereas the thinking or the private speech of other thinkers switches back and forth, like our daily conversations, between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Moreover, other thinkers such as the authors of this paper, Skinner and James, although they surely have much more SVB than those who are not into pragmatism and behaviorism, are still unknowingly mostly determined by the ubiquity of NVB. As a consequence, their efforts go mainly into writing about talking rather than in talking about talking. 

Although I am writing about talking, my attention mainly goes to talking about talking. James describes pragmatism as “the method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable.” In doing so, he refers to SVB. In the following statement James brings out his private speech into public speech. However, he mainly uses his writing to imagine what it would be like to speak about what he is thinking. Like Skinner, he was unknowingly describing SVB. “Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak, any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally.” (James, 1907/1996a, p. 34) 

Also the authors of this paper do a nice job of providing a description of SVB. “Truth, accordingly, is not an attribute of beliefs that represent reality in its formal or essential aspects, but a way to refer to whichever beliefs function productively to organize human experience.” It is one thing to read about this, but quite another to talk about it. For a long time the conviction has been that we will eventually talk about “the truth”, if we would study the writings of scientific and philosophic authors. However, this belief has proved to be false. The more we write and read about any scientific truth, the less we talk about it. This brought us to the situation where we are in today in which written words are more important than spoken words. 

Talking about “beliefs” that “function productively to organize human experience” requires SVB and will not be possible if we can't discriminate between SVB and NVB. How can we talk about this if we dysregulate each other? How can we talk about this if we don’t realize that our NVB prevents us from talking about this? Besides, the real work only begins once we have ongoing SVB. NVB imposes its dominance hierarchy as it creates and exploits chaos, but SVB evokes intelligent and refined interaction as we are able to talk about, enjoy and explore the oneness of our natural world. 

“Thus, theories become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest” (James, 1907/1996a, p. 32). In NVB we are stuck on theory, but in SVB we are open to any theory that explains reality.  Our conversation will make us aware there are many matters which we can only talk about when we have SVB. Our scientific disciplines are only useful to us to the extent that we can talk about them and therefore implement them. “Investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no theory is absolutely a transcript of reality, but that any one of them may from some point of view be useful” (James, 1907/1996a, p. 33).

SVB makes theories generated by NVB obsolete. Read carefully the following statement written by William James more than hundred years ago. We still need to learn to talk about what he wrote about. I love James. “To “agree” in the widest sense with reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or practically!. . .Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn’t entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality’s whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will hold true of that reality.” 

In SVB we agree, but in NVB, although we don’t realize it, we disagree. Indeed, in SVB we “agree in the widest sense with reality”, whereas in NVB we “entangle our progress in frustrations.” What was true about human interaction back then is still true today. “True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.” (James, 1907/1996a, p. 103) Our SVB will establish this long longed-for “consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.” 

My writing is not, like these authors, a function of a longing for a better way of communicating. To the contrary, it is a function of my ongoing experience and my ever-increasing knowledge about SVB. “James argues that a belief is not true; it becomes true; that is to say, it is made true as it is confronted with the demands following the interaction of men with reality: “Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its very-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation ” (James, 1907/ 1996a, p. 97).” The process James unknowingly was writing about is SVB. 

November 7, 2015

November 7, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my fourth response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). These authors “present an instrumental conception of truth, according to which the truth is “whatever yields the most effective action possible” (Skinner, 1974/1993, p. 259).”” Anyone who is familiar with the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) will agree that this distinction “yields the most effective action possible” as it effortlessly and predictably results into an increase of SVB and a decrease of NVB. Other approaches that attempted to change the way we talk couldn’t accomplish what the SVB/NVB distinction will again and again achieve. 

Just as Skinner took Thorndike’s instrumental learning to a new level with operant learning, the SVB/NVB distinction takes our vocal verbal behavior to a new level. It has this effect as it is based on Skinner’s “instrumental conception of truth.”Skinner calls a response instrumental if it is emitted voluntarily because of its consequence — that is, because of a stimulus (the SVB of others) that follows it. If the SVB speaker is not reciprocated by the listener, this is because the listener, due to his or her NVB history, is incapable of reinforcing the speaker. Only SVB is instrumental or operant as only in SVB the speaker is positively reinforced by the listener, who can become the speaker and take turns with the speaker. NVB, however, is elicited behavior as the listener often isn’t even allowed to speak.

Both in SVB and NVB communicators associate paired events, but only SVB is an example of voluntary, instrumental or operant conditioning, while NVB is an example of involuntary or classical conditioning. Stated differently, SVB is heterarchical, but NVB is hierarchical. Perhaps this difference is even more important than any other description. I have described NVB as hierarchical, but today I realize there must be an opposite to hierarchy. A heterarchy is a system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways. 

It doesn’t surprise me to find out that definitions of the term vary among disciplines. Any kind of agreement can only be accomplished if we have the SVB/NVB distinction in place. I suggest we use heterarchy and hierarchy to describe SVB and NVB. These terms also made me think of horizontality versus verticality. I describe SVB as horizontal as it grounds us, but I consider NVB as vertical as it makes us view ourselves and each other as higher or lower in the dominance hierarchy. 

These visual descriptions are quite useful for becoming more focused on auditory cues, which remain ‘out of sight’ due to our NVB. As SVB speakers are more down to earth they sound better than NVB speakers, who think they are better than everybody else. By rejecting “the notion of objectivity as correspondence of truth in favor of an interpretation consistent with the instrumental concept of truth”, Skinner was in my opinion unknowingly referring to SVB. His description “responses to some forms of stimulation are more likely to be ‘right’ than responses to others, in the sense that they are more likely to lead to effective behavior” (Skinner, 1953/1965, p. 139) fits exactly with SVB.  Besides leading to more effective behavior, SVB already is effective behavior.  

SVB responses “are more likely to be right” that is, they are more likely to describe reality accurately than NVB responses. This is not to be taken at ‘face value’, it requires auditory verification. By listening to the difference between SVB and NVB, we recognize and agree that only SVB can promote “identification with pragmatic principles” and that NVB will always obstruct inquiry of practical solutions. “According to Pierce, definitive beliefs, corresponding to reality and unassailable by doubt, would be possible through the application of methods used in experimental sciences, the same resource used to measure the truth or falsity of a belief.” Such verbal behavior must be SVB, but can’t be NVB. 

Only SVB allows us to fully doubt. In NVB we are presumably without any doubt. Only if we allow doubt, can it and will it come to an end. “Therefore, it is in terms of doubt and belief that the notion of truth shall be approached, but “truth is the end of inquiry, that opinion on which those who use the scientific method will, or perhaps would if they persisted long enough, agree” (Haack, 1978, p. 97, italics added). 

Preposterous as this may sound: SVB “is the end of inquiry.” Once we experience the great difference between SVB and NVB, we no longer doubt that we can stop NVB and continue with SVB.  Since we haven’t yet acknowledged the SVB/NVB distinction, we are unable to “persist long enough” with SVB to agree on this. Although it has been tried, we haven’t been successful in creating a scientific spoken communication. 

“The scientific method, Peirce argues, alone among methods of inquiry, is constrained by a reality which is independent of what anyone believes, and this is why it can lead to consensus. So, since truth is the opinion on which the scientific method will eventually settle, and since the scientific method is constrained by reality, truth is correspondence with reality. It also follows that the truth is satisfactory to believe, in the sense that it is stable, safe from the disturbance of doubt.” (Haack, 1978, p. 97). We can only continue to have SVB, become truly verbal and scientific, once we no longer aversively influence each other with the sound of our voice. Any behaviors which maintains the dominance hierarchy is unscientific and behavior which is scientific is heterarchical.

November 6, 2015

November 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students,

This is a third response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). Before further exploring this paper, I want to emphasize something about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Once you know you can have SVB by yourself, you get a better understanding to what extent it is made possible or not so possible due to your own behavioral history. Each time habits prevent you from having SVB, you will achieve it by exploring these habits out loud. You will find out on our own, that your speaking and listening behavior can be synchronized without any effort. 

When your speaking happens at a higher rate than your listening or when your listening happens at a higher rate than your speaking, you will have NVB, by yourself. During the former, you experience that you as the speaker, have a negative effect on you as the listener. In the latter, however, you will find that it is hard to say anything out loud as you judge yourself already before you have said it. During the latter, your listening to yourself is self-critical and self-censuring to your speaking. Obviously, this thinking-habit, this negative private speech, was conditioned by your involvement in and your repeated exposure to NVB public speech. Similarly, the extent to which you will find yourself having SVB is also a consequence of your previous exposure to SVB. If you experience a lot of instances of SVB on your own, this means you have already been conditioned to have it, but if you will have a lot of NVB instances, this indicates that your previous environments must have conditioned you to have thought like that. 

Whether you have high rates of SVB or NVB on your own is not the point. What matters is that you become more realistic and accurate about the conditioning effects of your previous environments. Each time your assessment is correct, you overcome the negative influences from your previous environments and you will be able to acknowledge and validate those influences that were positive for you. Familiarizing yourself with SVB and NVB, by talking out loud on your own, inevitably and effortlessly results into an increase of SVB and a decrease of NVB. 

This happens as you realize that SVB is not just some technique, but a natural phenomenon, which, depending on the circumstances, either can happen or can’t happen. Since you have become more familiar with the circumstances in which it can happen, it will happen more often, as you will now know what these circumstances are. When you are again with others, you will be able to recreate these circumstances which made it possible for your to have SVB while you were on your own. The conditions that make SVB possible are the same regardless of whether you are on your own or with others. You don’t and can’t have SVB with others for the exact same reasons that you don’t and can’t have SVB with yourself. Stated differently, when you are alone, the speaker and the listener either engage in and maintain SVB together or they engage in and maintain NVB together. Similarly, when you talk with others, you will know based on your self-experimentation that the speaker and the listener either engage in SVB or in NVB. There is never simultaneously a speaker who is engaging in SVB and a listener who is engaging in NVB. 

There will never be simultaneously a speaker who engages in NVB and a listener who engages in SVB. They can go back and forth between the two, but higher rates of SVB will only happen if this going back on forth can happen more often. Because of your self-experimentation you will know that you, that is, the speaker who is the listener, don’t have that problem of going back and forth between SVB and NVB. When you are with others, you will find that their behavioral history is such that they can’t allow this shift. You don’t need to change them. You give up trying to change them as you know the speaker can’t change the listener; the speaker and the listener are always together involved in SVB or in NVB. 

By noticing when that happens, the informed person will create more opportunity to experience SVB and make it available. The person who doesn’t have the necessary behavioral history can’t make that happen. The person who knows SVB is responsible for it and those who create NVB are responsible for their NVB. By simply letting things be the way they are, the shift from NVB to SVB becomes increasingly possible. The facts are the facts. In NVB we don’t care about the facts, but in SVB we become behavioral scientists, who consider their own behavior as data. 

Let me now comment on Tourinho’s and Neno’s paper. These authors refer to other behaviorists and to Skinner to “illustrate the notion of knowledge as behavior (contingency-shaped or rule-governed), from which the supposition results that “to impart knowledge is to bring behavior of a given topography under control of given variables.”” The term rule-governed behavior is used when responses are controlled by a verbal description rather than the contingency itself. The latter would be contingency-shaped behavior. In SVB and in NVB our voice (a given topography) is under control of other people (contingency-shaped). The more we learn about the SVB/NVB distinction, however, the more we describe our environment (the contingency) verbally and the more SVB is achieved as rule-governed behavior. During SVB we sound different as our voice (our topography) is controlled by different variables then during NVB.

November 5, 2015

November 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

Today I respond a second time to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). I comment as this paper links the continuation of ideas, which go from James to Skinner, to Tourinho, to me and, hopefully, to you. I should also mention Ernst Mach, who inspired Skinner’s “rejection of the empiricist criterion of agreement based on public observation” and  Sam Leighland, who commented in 1999 “it is clear that Skinner’s views on the goals of science, as well as his general view of truth, could be described as strongly pragmatic in character” (p. 483). I add these authors, as I am equally inspired by and grateful to them for their work. G.E. Zuriff deserves to be mentioned too as he linked James views on pragmatism to Skinner’s work. Although he said “pragmatic theory of truth” is “consistent with and characteristic of Skinner’s system”, he even reinterpreted James’s work by adding that “a theory more prominent in [James’s] work and more congruent with his philosophy of science is, in essence, a behaviorist version of pragmatic theory of truth.” 

Skinner’s work is superior to that of James as he derived “a particular notion of “explanation” from Mach: functional relationships, applied in his scientific project to the study of the organism’s interaction with the world around it.” You will notice that the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is about how human organisms interact with other organisms, their environments.

SVB and NVB are related to people who set the stage for one or the other. Another important point elaborated on by those who studied Skinner’s pragmatism was the notion of “knowledge as behavior.” Skinner wrote in 1968 that “to impart knowledge is to bring behavior of a given topography under control of given variables.” The word “topography” deals with what behavior looks like. It is easy to go wrong with describing operationally what behavior looks like. For instance, we are inclined to describe a child as defiant, when he or she is not doing as he or she is told. The latter is a better, topographical description as instances in which he or she is doing what he or she is told can be measured. It is easy to get carried away by words like ‘defiance’, which don’t stimulate us to calmly measure what is actually taking place and to learn more about the kind of verbal, but also vocal, instructions which stimulate the child to do or not do what it is told. 

Defining the topography of SVB and NVB is essential for experiencing and understanding this distinction. I mention experiencing first, since understanding is meaningless without experiencing it. Once you have experienced what SVB is, you understand it. If you don’t understand it, this is because you didn’t experience it. We are wasting time by trying to understand each other as we are no longer experiencing each other. And, how are we to experience each other, if we don’t even experience ourselves? Certain conditions must be met before we can understand each other. Once these conditions are met, understanding will happen. When circumstances are such that understanding can happen, it will happen. We are talking about what and how we are talking. Our verbal behavior not only looks a particular way, it also sounds a particular way. How verbal behavior looks is more apparent in written than in spoken language. We can’t see words while we speak, but we can hear them.

The topography of our spoken words – which are produced by the air we breathe-out from our lungs and sets our vocal cords in motion – has to be defined as our sound, which is shaped by our tongue and our lips. Defining the topography of verbal behavior that is used by presumably healthy people is as important as defining the topography of those who suffer from behavioral disabilities, such as autism. With the latter, we are more inclined to do a better job at defining the topography as we will otherwise not make any progress in treatment of this disorder. 

As our everyday interaction is not widely considered to be a problem and as we have all sorts of ways of down-playing this problem, we are not paying attention to how we sound while we speak. If we did, we would find that not listening to our own sound while we speak makes us overly concerned with the topography of others, outward-oriented. However, in SVB, in  which we listen to ourselves while we speak, we realize once and for all that the speaker-as-own-listener includes the listener-other-than-the-speaker, while, in NVB, our usual focus on the listener-other-than-the-speaker excludes the speaker-as-own-listener.

During NVB, we coerce others into listening to us or we put a whole lot of effort into trying to listen to others, but our focus is always outward, on others and not on ourselves. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker’s focus is on his or her own sound, that is, on him or herself. All problems of interaction can be solved in this manner. As long as communicators are carried away by their own words, outward-oriented and struggling to get each other’s attention, our communication problems will not and cannot be solved. As long as we sound aversive to each other, we are not talking with each other. As we judge each other and call each other names, we don’t pay attention to how we sound while we do this. Only if we sound better can we overcome  our communication problems.