November 12, 2015

November 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my ninth and last response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). Indeed “scientific verbal behavior [SVB, when it is spoken] is a function of the scientist with his subject matter but also of contingencies provided by the scientific verbal community.” Skinner created his own contingencies. He once stated (I paraphrase) he would remake the whole field if he had to. “Considering that and assuming that the behavior-analytic approach to behavioral research and intervention leads the scientist to study the relationship of the organism as a whole with its surroundings”, Skinner steered clear from NVB as in NVB the organism is clearly threatened by its surroundings. The fact that he was more effective in arranging his own SVB than others made his “references to effectiveness as a truth criterion” more precise rather than “imprecise”, as these author argue.

Pragmatism “emphasizes functional aspects of the processes of constructing and validating our beliefs about reality” and in doing so it is an argument in favor of SVB. Skinner took James’s pragmatism to the next level by asserting that “the pragmatic truth criterion requires, preliminarily, agreement with its basic beliefs concerning behavior.” We can only continue to reason from a SVB perspective, if we actually engage in SVB as SVB is a natural phenomenon. We either engage in SVB or in NVB. Although we have instances of SVB, we remain mostly engaged in NVB. “To appeal to the successful working of a belief, not taking into consideration that coherence requirement, either leads to inconsistencies or makes it impossible to check the validity of a presumed explanation of behavior.”

SVB and NVB each have their own internal coherency. Any incoherence always derives from the fluctuating rates of SVB and NVB in any verbal episode. To think that incoherence is a function of representationalism or mentalism is not the point. It is because SVB is so easily disturbed, that we are still dealing with “inconsistencies” that make “it impossible to check the validity of a presumed explanation of behavior.” Skinner’s radical behaviorism still depends on our spoken communication to be spread and behaviorists have been slow to acknowledge this fact.

It is for good reason that Skinner considered his book Verbal Behavior (1957) his most important work. However, as long as the SVB/NVB distinction has not been made, behaviorists (as well as cognitivists) are  verbally beating around the nonverbal bush. Consistent results will require consistent relationships. Such relationships require agreement and therefore SVB. SVB is based on agreement, but NVB is based on disagreement. Presumably, in NVB we agree to disagree, but in SVB we agree to agree. When we agree in SVB, we agree explicitly as well as implicitly. We often explicitly agree, but implicitly we disagree. This inconsistency is a product of NVB. NVB overt public speech results in NVB covert private speech. Once we know this, we realize there is no need to “work out the consequences of the disagreement.”

What we call disagreement are different rates of SVB and NVB which occur due to our different histories. By all means, we need to “take into account” the “beliefs about behavior within the context of which effectiveness is being evaluated.” As long as we are trapped by NVB, we cannot be pragmatic, effective or coherent. Neither James’s pragmatic philosophy nor Skinner’s explanatory model will be of much use to us if we keep messing things up with our different rates of SVB and NVB.

Progress has depended and will continue to depend on the extent to which SVB increases and NVB will decrease. Of course, this can only occur if we discriminate and maintain contingencies which make this possible. Skinner didn’t make “imprecise references to effectiveness as a truth criterion”, to the contrary, he only made us more precise.  

The scientific community has yet to provide the contingency for SVB. James and Skinner and the authors of this paper, who link the two, are among the few scientists who can make arrangements which can make SVB possible. Since they are not doing this deliberately or consciously, SVB is more of a byproduct than an immediate result of their actions. Their study of “the relationship of the organism as a whole with its surroundings” hasn’t yet focused on how we sound while we speak. What they have been doing is listening to what they say, but after they have said it. This is an example of NVB. In NVB speakers listen to or privately think about what they say before they speak or after they have spoken. In SVB, however, we attain the possibility of listening to ourselves while you speak. This can happen as listening and speaking behavior occur at the same rate. Moreover, we continue to fine tune speaking and listening behaviors due to the total absence of aversive stimulation. In an operating room we keep the place free of germs, likewise in a SVB environment we control for aversive stimulation. A new kind of order, coherence, effectiveness, control and pragmatism emerges as we prolong our experiences of SVB.

Last night I had a dream. I was rowing a makeshift raft near a swamp. All my books were stacked on this raft and also some rocks. Somebody ask me to remove one of the rocks. The raft slowly tilted and all my books slid off and disappeared into the swamp. Initially, I was horrified, but there was the thought that I knew what was in these books and didn’t need them anymore. In this dream I was once again affected by NVB. Due to the amount of SVB public speech that I have experienced nothing was lost and my SVB private speech continued. Ultimately, that is, individually, checking “the validity of a presumed explanation of behavior” depends more on spoken than on written language. NVB makes us overestimate the importance of written language and ignore spoken language. Like Robinson Crusoe, we can speak with ourselves in the absence of others. Only to the extent that we have done that can we understand others who have also done that. 

November 11, 2015

November 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my eight response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). The authors devote the last section of their paper to “limits of the pragmatic criterion in behavior analysis”. This tells me they themselves  aren’t pragmatic. They are still struggling with Skinner’s “generic definition” which “provides for instrumental criterion in 1945.” Skinner wrote “What matters to Robinson Crusoe is not whether he is agreeing with himself but whether he is getting anywhere with his control over nature” (Skinner, 1945, p. 293). Remarkably, they don’t go at all into the fact that Crusoe was talking out loud with himself and that this was made possible by the behavioral his history of talking with others. 

Even though he was all alone on his island, Crusoe, by talking out loud with himself, made his private speech public. Interestingly, the authors do mention that “Skinner suggested that, even in the absence of verbal interaction with others (and, therefore, in the absence of public agreement), the validity of an explanation could be checked”, but they don’t mention anything about the fact that a person’s private speech is of course a function of that person’s public speech. Instead they write “Whether or not it is possible to achieve agreement in the absence of verbal interaction is a question that merits discussion, but to reject the requirement of public observation should not mean that the coherence criterion could be neglected.” Skinner had something in common with Crusoe and that is why he used him as an example to explain his views. He knew the advantage of being alone and (like me) he “checked” the “validity” of all his explanations on his own before he revealed them to others. 

Skinner was able to practice self-management as he had a high rate of SVB in his behavioral history. These high rates of SVB continue in the absence of others in private speech and are automatically reinforced. Skinner didn’t need those who knew less than him, who had more NVB and couldn’t achieve agreement with him. This is the situation anyone with high rates of SVB finds him or herself in: one is liberated from the large NVB crowd.

Let there be no question about why I cherry-pick from the behaviorist literature: I only choose what serves my purpose. Had Skinner used other heroes like Crusoe more often and had he written more books like Walden II, radical behaviorism might have reached a broader audience. However, he didn’t experience any limitation to his pragmatic approach and that is why he stuck with it and kept on going. His work, like mine, kept on growing and growing during his life time. Seeing this development was his biggest joy. “It is, indeed, an a posteriori conclusion generated by theories selected according to their effect upon the scientist or professional who is conducting the behavioral study that will promote cultural survival.”

Only after we come back again to SVB can we realize we were involved in NVB. NVB goes on so often, but we remain unaware of it. Only when NVB was stopped can we explore and reap the benefits of SVB. Certainly, this doesn’t happen often, but that is our problem. It could happen effortlessly and repeatedly, but we don’t know how to make it happen. I write to explain to the reader that SVB requires the absence of aversive stimulation. Only those who speak English understand English and “only those who share the values of a behavior-analytic culture will agree.” Only those who engage in SVB will agree with SVB. It is sufficient to know that SVB is possible. 

Unlike these authors I think that “The effectiveness criterion” does “take into consideration the preliminary role that basic beliefs or assumptions play in controlling the use of effectiveness as means of assessing the validity of an explanation.” These authors reason from a NVB point of view, while Skinner reasons from a SVB point of view. They are silly to accuse Skinner of being “dogmatic.”  Since they are stuck in the same NVB boat as Hayes, they are looking for something to base their argument on. All they can do is yank the reader around with more writings from others who disagree with Skinner. Yet, to carve out their own niche, they state “Nevertheless, Hayes (1993) is not here taking into account that, for Skinnerian behaviorism, analytic objectives or prior goals are not prediction and control as such, but a set of specific beliefs about its subject matter: behavior.” Since this is true, Hayes was wrong. In my analysis, Skinner has more SVB than the majority of behaviorists and the authors of this paper have more SVB than Hayes.

In both SVB and NVB we are dealing with “a set of specific beliefs about” how we talk. If this writing was a real conversation, mentioning objectives which can be found “throughout Skinner’s work” would involve increased rates of SVB. Although he didn’t know the SVB/NVB distinction, Skinner’s references to verbal behavior were “clearly defined, explicitly addressed, and frequently recognized as arbitrary (perhaps the only exception to this is the reference to the “natural lines of fracture along which behavior and environment actually break”) [Skinner, 1935/1961b, p. 347]).

In Skinner’s statement about Crusoe, “what was being rejected was” NOT “a criterion (adopted by methodological behaviorism) of intersubjective agreement based on public observation.” Unknowingly, Skinner was asserting the validity of SVB, which neither requires “agreement based on public observation,” nor agreement based on private observation. As there is no separation between speaker and listener, the issue of agreement doesn’t arise in SVB. Crusoe taught Skinner to keep NVB at a minimum.

November 10, 2015

November 10, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my seventh response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction emphasizes the “organism-environment relationship, a correlation between classes of stimuli and classes of responses (Skinner, 1935/1961b).” The sets of experiences of speakers and listeners in SVB and NVB are very different. 

In SVB speakers and listeners are connected, but in NVB speakers and listeners are separated. Due to the NVB antecedents, the speaker and the listener in most of us individually are separated. We are used to NVB, but not to SVB. “The notion of classes of stimuli and classes of responses will be essential to accommodating behavior variability in the Skinnerian explanatory system” and are necessary for explaining SVB. NVB doesn’t allow “behavioral variability.” Moreover, SVB involves “processes through which individuals take advantage of behavior already acquired by others”, but NVB only selects behaviors that narrow down our operant repertoires. 

Although in writing, “behavior analysts recognize variation in human behavior” and “approach variation from the biological perspective,” they continue to miss out on the importance of having face to face conversation about this matter. “The behavior of the organism as a whole is the product of three types of variation and selection: …natural selection,…operant conditioning, and processes through which individuals take advantage of behavior already acquired by others” (Skinner, 1990, p. 1206). 

To talk about cultural conditioning, operant conditioning and classical conditioning requires SVB. Presumably “In all cases, however, one observes that, when speaking of a pragmatic criterion, the author’s only reference is the effectiveness principle.” (italics by me). They are only referring to the “effectiveness principle” in writing and yet they make it seem as if they are “speaking of a pragmatic criterion.” There is nothing pragmatic about writing about matters which we should be speaking about. Furthermore, reference to the “effectiveness principle” makes much more sense if our conversations were based on it. If this would be the case, we would engage in SVB continuously. In NVB, even behaviorists never “arrive at more consistent criteria for validating our claims to knowledge.” 

Many papers have been written about behavior and many discussions presumably took place in these papers to close “the gap between behaviorist and cognitive researcher”, but nobody thoroughly acknowledges the importance to talk about this. “Fully accepting inner causes should be a consequence of accepting the fundamentals of radical behaviorism. And what is more, thus radicalizing radical behaviorism might close some of the gap between behaviorist and cognitivist researcher—to render us with a more comprehensive psychology of both private and public behavior.”(Overskeid, 1994, p. 41) There is nothing radical about writing papers which are read by only a few experts and not talked about. 

“Overskeid is correct in demanding a more consistent discussion on the status and functions of private events in behavioral processes; however, strictly speaking, to simply accept internal causes for behavior will not be effective or ineffective within the scope of Skinnerian science; it is more a matter of working with a different notion of behavior (other preliminary beliefs), another subject matter, compatible with another set of postulates.” Each time we demand "a more consistent discussion” we engage in NVB. 

SVB is that “different notion of behavior (other preliminary beliefs), another subject matter, compatible with another set of postulates.” It is not surprising that according to “articles published in the journal  Behavioral Therapy” behaviorists have been “drifting somewhat” from their “basic science foundations.” They neither talk nor sound like Skinner. Unlike them, he was having many instances of SVB in each of his verbal episodes. 

Most behaviorists have mostly NVB instances when they talk, that is, if they talk at all. “Declining trends in the publication of the single-case design studies from 1974 to 1997” (Forsyth et al., 1999, p. 215) results from the absence of actual conversation. Rather than blaming “social and institutional constraints” behaviorists should learn to discriminate between instances of SVB and NVB. The question “whether we are still achieving the goal of advancing behavioral science as a means to alleviate a wider range of human suffering” derives from NVB. There is no doubt in those who know about SVB that it alleviates “a wider range of human suffering.” 

The authors write “As long as we are achieving this pragmatic goal” of “alleviating human suffering” then “perhaps it matters little what we call ourselves or what we ultimately do”. (1999, p. 218, italics added). I strongly disagree with this. They can’t have achieved this goal without SVB. If they had achieved it, they would place greater importance on how they talk, but they haven't done that. Moreover, it matters a great deal we tact NVB as NVB and SVB as SVB. “The possibility of a science of behavior advancing towards the solution of human problems” cannot become a reality unless discriminating SVB and NVB is our “pragmatic objective.” Behaviorists only complain in writing that the DSM-IV is “topographically oriented” and “not revealing any concern for identifying behavioral relationships.”