February 23 , 2016

February 23 , 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 212) Skinner explains why we have trouble seeing ourselves as part of the natural environment. “What do people do about such a scientific picture of man is call it wrong, demeaning, and dangerous, argue against it, and attack those who propose or defend it. They do so not out of wounded vanity but because the scientific formulation has destroyed accustomed reinforcers.” Mostly people change the conversation when it is no longer reinforcing to them. What goes on unnoticed is that such a change is always from Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which people felt reinforced, to Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which they continuously judge, argue and attack one another. 

Although it is true that we don’t feel reinforced by something we don’t believe in, the shift from SVB to NVB has more to do with how things are being said than about what is being said. In Skinner’s written analysis the focus is on what is being said, but by fixating on the verbal and by asserting counter control, he inadvertently enhances NVB even though in his speech he mostly had SVB. “If a person can no longer take credit or be admired for what he does [read: what he says], then he seems to suffer a loss of dignity and worth, and [verbal] behavior previously reinforced by credit or admiration will undergo extinction” (p. 212) [italics & words added].

When things are not how we believe them to be, we are said to be lost for words. When our explanation, our theory, our belief, our verbal behavior turns out to be wrong, this always dramatically changes the conversation. Under such circumstances our verbal behavior is a function of threatening stimuli.  On the cover of Verbal Behavior (1957) an illustrative incident is mentioned.  Skinner was at a dinner sitting next to the famous philosopher Whitehead. He tried to explain to him that science can account for our verbal behavior, but Whitehead basically ended the conversation by challenging him and expressing his doubt. 

Whitehead said to Skinner “Let me see you account for my behavior as I sit here saying no black scorpion is falling upon this table.” What should be noticed here about this event is that Whitehead had no answer to Skinner’s claim that science can in fact account for our verbal behavior and ended the conversation with him by throwing in a nonverbal threat, a curveball as they say. It was clearly Whitehead who changed the conversation from SVB to NVB. 

As the story goes, the rest is history and “Next morning Skinner began this book.” Thus, Skinner wrote his book Verbal Behavior (1957) in response to Whitehead, who had changed the conversation from SVB to NVB. Skinner proved his point which becomes more clear when behaviorists consider the SVB/NVB distinction.  In none of the papers that were written by behaviorists this incident has been analyzed in this manner. Whitehead clearly tried to intimidate Skinner. How can anyone have missed that? Whitehead must have perceived Skinner’s science of human behavior as threatening, why else would this scholar say something so unnecessarily attacking? 

The SVB/NVB distinction demonstrates that our belief in logical arguments is utterly flawed as it never did or could prevent hostile interaction. Why would there have to be any hostility if we are only concerned with the facts? The fact is, however, that we get upset every time we are no longer in touch with the facts. Also, the fact is that most human interaction, as demonstrated by the dialogue between Skinner and Whitehead, is to not about the facts, but about human emotions.  As long as these negative emotions generated by NVB are continued, we cannot get to the facts. Only with positive emotions, which are expressed during the SVB of Skinner, can we get to the facts. 

With all respect for Skinner, it is NOT true that “No theory changes what a theory is about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way (p. 213).” When we engage in SVB and extinguish NVB, we find our that SVB talking and analyzing changes things a great deal. In SVB we fluidly change how we talk and change the way we think as we are no longer feeling threatened.  The fact that we haven’t been able to create the safe environments in which SVB could continue is based on our ignorance about how SVB actually works. We have all had instances of SVB, but we did not engage in SVB reliably, skillfully, predictably, consciously and continuously.  Our reality of conflicts and problems is not going to change as long as we keep talking about it, like Whitehead did, in a NVB manner.

February 22 , 2016

February 22 , 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 211) Skinner writes “The direction of the controlling relation is reversed: a person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him.” Indeed, “in the scientific picture a person is a member of a species shaped by evolutionary contingencies of survival, displaying behavioral processes which bring him under the control of the environment in which he lives (p. 211).” To bring about this “sweeping change” in our “traditional way of thinking” there MUST be a change in how we communicate which is as incredible as when we transitioned from vocalizers to verbalizers. 

Since this shift from Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) couldn’t yet occur, Skinner’s operant science unfortunately is known only by a small group of academics and is not as accepted and validated as Darwin’s theory of evolution.  In part the reason for this is that how we speak is considered to be of less importance than what is written.  Once we discriminate the two universal response classes SVB and NVB that occur in each language of the world, we realize that “our traditional way of thinking” could not change as long as our way of talking didn’t change. 

Our vocalizations became verbalizations in relatively comfortable environments, in caves, where there were no threats. Our high rates of NVB and our low rates of SVB indicate that we must be stimulated repeated by aversive environmental stimuli.  These threatening stimuli are certainly there, but our NVB way of talking doesn’t allow us to discriminate them as such. Likewise, our generally low rates of SVB indicate there aren’t many peaceful and stable environments which are conducive to higher rates of SVB. Rather than blaming each other or ourselves as we usually do, we must begin to look to the environment as to why human interaction is such a big problem around world. Only in NVB do we consider it a “loss of dignity and worth (p. 212)” that we can no longer “take credit or be admired” for what we do in our place in the natural world. In SVB, on the other hand, we realize how childish this actually is and we grow up. Our NVB temper tantrums will be extinguished once we have more SVB and create a new culture.

February 21 , 2016

February 21 , 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 207) Skinner writes “The human species has probably not undergone much genetic change in recorded time. We only have to go back a thousand generations to reach the artists of the caves of Lascaux.” It wasn’t until about that time (17,000 before present) that our vocal cords are believed to have come under functional control of our environment.  These Upper Paleolithic works of art which depict primarily large animals and typical local and contemporary fauna that corresponds with the fossil record were found in 1940.  It is believed these depictions of hunting scenes and animals led to the development of language. 

Preceded by eons of time in which humans were only capable of producing and responding to sound, the development of language is a relatively recent event in evolutionary history.  However, “We have seen what happens when a child grows up in an impoverished environment (p. 207); language couldn’t occur if our environment didn’t stimulate us to have it.” Thus, unless autism is viewed as a contingency-based disorder of verbal behavior, we have no options of treating it. What is missing in the environment of the autistic due to which language learning doesn’t occur? We know unequivocally that improvements can be made by making a behavioral analysis. 

By tracing back, identifying and manipulating the environmental variables of which autistic behavior is a function, we can increase a person’s verbal behavior and decrease the maladaptive behavior which happens instead.  Although we have behaviorism to back up such interventions, what is still missing is an understanding of the autistic’s response to the sound of the person who teaches him or her. 

Evolutionary speaking only one of two responses are possible: either the child responds to threat or it responds to safety. In other words, there occurs Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which the speaker effects the listener with an appetitive contingency or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker effects the listener with an aversive contingency.  The high rates of NVB and the low rates of SVB of the parents and the teachers are hypothesized to cause and maintain autistic behavior!  Conversely, an increase of SVB and a decrease of NVB is believed to increase language acquisition.  Verbal reports of those who work with autistic children consistently validated this view.

February 20 , 2016

February 20 , 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 207) Skinner writes “It is only autonomous man who has reached a dead end. Man himself may be controlled by his environment, but it is an environment which is almost wholly of his own making.” I disagree with this statement. The autonomous man hasn’t reached a dead end yet. After all, he sets the stage for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which can be heard everywhere.  Autonomous man seems to be winning as very little is heard from those who set the stage for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

The reason we don’t hear much at all from those who set the stage for SVB is that our listening behavior was primarily conditioned by NVB. As we are, we are basically incapable of listening to SVB.  This doesn’t mean, however, that we have a hearing defect; it simply means that we keep re-creating the environments in which we can’t listen to each other, since as individual speakers, we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak. We keep creating environments in which we argue, fight and compete as we don’t really know how to create the environments which will reliably give rise to the conversations in which we all feel validated, understood, respected and listened to. 

As long as we are unaware and uneducated about the SVB/NVB distinction we remain incapable of maintaining the environment in which SVB can continue. By default, we create environments that can only produce NVB. Skinner writes “When a person changes his physical or social environment “intentionally” – that is, in order to change human behavior, including his own – he plays two roles: one as a controller, as the designer of a controlling culture, and another as the controlled, as the product of a culture (p. 207).”  It is because of NVB, which always separates the speaker from the listener, that we have a problem distinguishing our role as a controller and as the controlled, which gets confused in the conflict between ‘a self’ and the other (self). We come to terms with this identity problem in SVB.

February 19, 2016

February 19, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 193) Skinner writes “Perhaps the last stronghold of autonomous man is that complex “cognitive” activity called thinking. Because it is complex, it has yielded only slowly to explanations in terms of contingencies (italics added).” He is warning and educating readers about the apparent simplicity of explanations that are referring to an inner autonomous self which presumably causes behavior. He emphasizes complexity because he is unknowingly also debunking our course-grained way of talking which cannot allow this complexity to be properly communicated. 

Skinner is in my opinion trying to replace Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In NVB the speaker defends his thinking that is believed to be caused by a behavior-creating inner self, known as a person’s identity. In SVB, however, the speaker has no need for an identity as there is no aversive stimulation at all. 

We make a big deal about what we think, as we believe to be who we think we are. In SVB our identity is analyzed and resolved while we speak. We believe to be who we think we are and keep referring to “autonomous man” as we have been and have continued to be conditioned by NVB. We could not find out about the contingencies of which our behavior is a function long as NVB continued.  

NVB dispositionalizes and disembodies us, whereas SVB situationalizes us and attunes us to the environment within our own skin, our body. In NVB we get carried away by what we say and we disconnect from our experience while we speak as we are aversively affected by our environment, by others speakers.  When NVB is stopped in an environment which makes SVB possible we can at long last begin to acknowledge that there is neither a speaker nor a listener inside of us, only joined speaking and listening behavior in the here and now.

To put it in Skinner’s words “The picture which emerges from a scientific analysis is not of a body with a person inside, but of a body which is a person in the sense that it displays a complex repertoire of behavior (p.199).”  As stated, contingencies determine whether we will engage in SVB or in NVB. Moreover, “The contingencies are not stored; they have simply left a changed person (p. 196).” 

Only those who repeatedly explore the SVB/NVB distinction will be changed by it. The most important change occurs because of the conversation in which we can acknowledge that there is no self that causes our behavior. Of course, such a conversation needs to be ongoing for it to have an effect. Although we occasionally achieve SVB, we don’t have it in a skillful, deliberate and conscious manner.

We only have SVB in an accidental, once-in-a-blue-moon kind of fashion. Behaviorists who don’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction produce similar rates of NVB as non-behaviorists. The sentence “What is being abolished is autonomous man – the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literature of freedom and dignity (p. 200)” is clearly directed at what has been written. It is an argument which has its origin in NVB.  

Written words can be a function of SVB, but SVB is not learned by reading about it, but by engaging in it. In SVB we talk with each other and nothing needs to be “abolished” or “defended” as we all enjoy the absence of “a possessing demon.” Skinner urged us to dispossess autonomous man, so that we could “turn to the real causes of human behavior (p. 201)”, but he didn’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction.  Only if we talk with one another can we “turn from the inferred to the observable, from the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to the manipulable (p. 201).” This line of reasoning is a function of NVB. In SVB the observable, the natural, the manipulable are expressible and apparent. In SVB we are able to realize that NVB, our way of talking which was based on aversive contingencies, limited what we could see, verify and manipulate.  Thus, only SVB makes the contingency clear of which it is a function.