December 2, 2015

December 2, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my second response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (1998) by O’Donohoe, Gallaghan and Ruchstuhl. I will only pick a few lines from this paper to help to help you understand that my distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is an extension of B.F. Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism.

Skinner (1975) stated “(as James suggested),"Perhaps we do not strike because we feel anger but feel angry because we strike" (p.43). It is interesting to note that James uses the expression of a negative emotion to make something clear about the expression of emotion. Since this would be an example of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I want to give you an example of the expression of positive emotions, of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). When you find out by listening to yourself while you speak that you sound good, you are not trying to sound good. As long as you are trying to sound good, you are not sounding good. 

Once you sound good, this is not caused by you, but rather, you sound good as you can sound good. In other words, you only sound good as you are simultaneously really feeling good. If you share this experience of listening to yourself while you speak with others who, like you, also listen to themselves while they speak, you will all agree that when we engage in SVB, each speaker sounds and simultaneously feels good. This makes total sense as SVB signifies the absence of aversive stimulation. 

Going back to the aforementioned example by William James and applying it SVB (the expression of positive emotion), we don’t sound good because we feel good, that is, our pleasant-sounding voice is not caused by this inner feeling. Instead, we can feel good, because we can sound good. In other words, we feel good because we can express our positive emotions. 

Each time the circumstances allowed this to happen, our experience of positive emotions co-occurred with our accurate verbal expression of these positive emotions. Since only SVB can stimulate and evoke the speaker-as-own-listener, which is needed to accurately describe our positive emotions, our positive emotions are only validated, enhanced and increased to the extent that we are achieving instances of SVB. NVB, on the other hand, is about the reinforcement of our negative emotions. In NVB, we say ‘I have to disagree with you’ as we feel compelled, coerced and bound.

December 1, 2015

December 1, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

In “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” (1998) Donohoe quotes Skinner, who said “the bodily conditions [that] we feel are collateral products of our genetic and environmental histories. They have no explanatory force; they are simply additional facts to be taken into account" (Skinner, 1975, p.43). Donohoe writes that “your beliefs, desires, attitudes and intentions cannot be shown to have a causal role in your behavior. The ability to manipulate environmental variables directly allows the behavioral researcher to demonstrate prediction and control in a way that internal constructs such as belief and thought do not.” I am not interested in your convictions or overrated gut-feelings. I care about the sound of your voice, which is different under different circumstances. If you listen to yourself while you speak, you will begin to notice this.

By listening to yourself while you speak you hear a different voice than when you are not listening to yourself while you speak. In the former, you engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and your voice will be experienced as an appetitive stimulus by the listener, but in the latter, you engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and your voice is experienced as an aversive stimulus by the listener. The manipulated observable environmental variable is your voice and this manipulation involves the speaker-as-own-listener. Thus, in NVB the speaker-as-own-listener is absent, but in SVB the-speaker-as-own-listener is present.

The presence of the speaker-as-own-listener is achieved by describing our loud to yourself the fact that you listen to yourself while you speak. Nothing else or no one else is needed. The prediction that you will sound different when you listen to yourself while speak is true and you must verify this. The verification process, which activates the speaker-as-own-listener, stimulates a new behavioral control, which is not achieved because you make yourself sound in a particular kind of way. Although you are not causing yourself to sound a certain way, when you listen to yourself while you speak, you sound different than when you were not listening. Also, the conversation which becomes possible due to the stimulation of the speaker-as-own-listener is very different from the so-called interaction in which no such stimulation happens. In SVB all the communicators agree that they sound good. Once SVB has been achieved all the communicators acknowledge that in NVB the listener experiences the speaker’s voice as a noxious stimulus from which they want to and try to move away. In SVB the speaker-as-own-listener aligns his or her rational and emotional expression, but in NVB, such alignment cannot occur.   

November 30, 2015

November 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

People have different behavioral histories in which they have experienced different rates of SVB and NVB. When we consider SVB and NVB by ourselves, we must realize that our speaking and listening behaviors have different behavioral histories too. In NVB our speaking is happening at the expense of our listening or our listening is happening at the expense of our speaking. In both cases, speaking and listening behavior happen at different rates. The more NVB we have, the greater the difference will be between our speaking and our listening behavior. Obviously, such a difference always separates the speaker from the listener. This separation occurs as our belief in the inner causation of behavior gets us stuck with the explanatory fiction called the speaker and the listener. There is in reality neither a speaker nor a listener. These are reifications, verbs that turned into nouns. There is only speaking and listening, two different behaviors which were conditioned at different times in different environments in the early stages of our verbal development.

Once you have that right it is very easy to join your speaking and your listening behavior and to attain SVB by yourself. Once again, you don’t cause your own SVB, it happens as you realize that speaking and listening behavior was not joined. Whether you know it or not, speaking and listening behavior already happen simultaneously. Due to NVB you were led to believe they will always continue to happen at different rates. Once you listen to yourself while you speak, it is self-evident that speaking and listening happen at the same rate. Just because nobody has stimulated you to explore this doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. Consequently, you can, all by yourself, effortlessly achieve SVB. It is of great significance that you as a speaker produce a sound which you as a listener find soothing. As you speak with that sound, you find that you become more and more relaxed. Also, you notice that speaking with a voice that gives you energy makes you and keeps you conscious. Since this vibration was absent in NVB, you realize that NVB has kept you unconscious. During SVB you become more and more quiet. This contradicts your NVB experience in which talking upsets and agitates you or makes you feel tired or drained. Listening is to speaking as having your eyes open is to seeing. 

November 29, 2015

November 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

Once you experience and understand the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), you know these two different response classes are maintained by very different environments. However, when I say environments, I mean people with different behavioral histories. Those who have more SVB than NVB have entirely different behavioral histories than those who keep having more NVB than SVB. Moreover, those who have increasingly more SVB don’t and can’t talk with those who have increasingly more NVB. Thus, when SVB increases, things happen by themselves rather than presumably by you. This is a great relief which cannot be compared to anything you already know. It is new and, remarkably, this newness remains.

Any attempt on your part to achieve SVB with someone who is more inclined towards NVB is based on your misunderstanding of SVB and NVB. Your wanting to have more SVB is based on your ignorance about how it really works. In NVB people believe they cause their own behavior, but in SVB we finally overcome this long-held, silly belief. If you still try to have SVB by yourself, as I have suggested, you will find that you will only have it when you give up trying to have it. Your failure to accurately assess others is directly related to your inability to appreciate the fact that SVB with yourself is of course also not caused by you. Whenever you revert back again to this false explanation that your behavior is caused by you, you will have NVB by yourself.

Whether you talk with yourself and listen to yourself while you speak or whether you talk with others, both circumstances either set the stage for SVB or NVB. It doesn’t matter whether you talk with yourself or with others, the circumstances are the same when SVB or NVB occurs. When you are with others it is much harder to verify this, but when you are alone this is easy to do. Once you experimented with the SVB/NVB distinction by yourself, you will become capable of accurately assessing the SVB and NVB in others. As long as you haven’t experimented on your own you will be incapable of accurately accessing others. It is equally problematic to think that others are causing their own behavior or that you are causing your own behavior. In both cases you engage in NVB. We co-regulate each other and ourselves in SVB, but we dis-regulate each other and ourselves in NVB.

November 28, 2015

November 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

The death of my father in law a couple of years ago was a major event in my life. Last time we were visiting my mother in law, I was still mourning his departure, but this time I was no longer sad about his death. My mother in law also seemed to have moved on as there were new pictures of him at her house, which weren’t there before. I still thought of him and so did my wife, but there was no longer that feeling of loss. One moment, I closed my eyes and I thought what a blessing it has been for me to know my father in law. My connection with my own father was never that good, but my relationship with him has always been very reinforcing.

As I am writing these words I realize I have been in a different environment. My mother in law lives in China Town in Oakland. As I am thinking about the difference between my father in law and my own father, I understand that coming to the United States has been a great gift to me. I occasionally still read a Dutch newspaper online, but I no longer feel like I am Dutch. This is progress for me and my nostalgic feelings about Holland seem to have finally left me. I have decided some years ago to stop all contact with my family. No matter who I talked with, I kept being negatively affected. I no longer feel the sadness of not being in contact with my family. I have come to terms with it.

Strange that the separation between me and my family has become final. I could have never believed that this would happen and that I would feel okay about deciding this. On numerous occasions I have revisited this decision. Each time I back-tracked, I started feeling miserable again. Not too long ago, I wrote a letter in which I explained to myself my decision, but when I read it to my wife it was clear I didn’t want to send it. I am not imagining about going back to Holland anymore. My life is shaped by my exploration of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and I had to leave those who were unable to have SVB with me. I don't think other people who learn about SVB will have to do the same as I did. It was a decision I had to make. My family demonized me for insisting on SVB and I kept feeling upset about that. A compromise was no longer possible. I no longer feel stuck in NVB as I stopped all contact with my family. I am happy to have so much SVB without them. Also, I am happy I left behind the people who didn’t have the behavioral history to come along with me. I still care about them and I don’t blame them, but I am no longer wasting my time with them. It took me a long time before I was ready to decide as I did, but I am glad I was able to make this decision.