April 13, 2016

April 13, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes that “this experience [a monumental life event] is evoked rather than emitted, although it serves as the basic unit for emitted behaviors” [words added by this writer]. In other words, a life-threatening event, the foxhole experience, evokes respondent as well as operant behavior. As I have already explained in my previous writings, effortful and effortless behavior cannot occur esimultaneously; they always occur sequentially. Likewise, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as well as graceful and acquired religious behavior also occur successively. 

Strand thinks that “foundational religious experiences” may be “more complex than simply responding to the frame of self-as-infinite.” He quotes Ainslie (2001) who found that “concurrent schedules may give rise to attentional switching, which is the basis for a variety of experiential-behavioral phenomena including compulsions, addictions, psycho-genic itches and pains.” In my analysis, mental health issues, political grandiosity, as well as effortful religion are all labeled as being a function of NVB. 

This is where Strand’s analysis and the SVB/NVB distinction overlap, as it highlights that behavioral phenomena may be defined in terms of the patterning of responding that occurs across multiple schedules.” I think the patterning of responding is explained very well by SVB and NVB. However, we must account for how this “attentional switching” comes about. When an elicited escape response is ineffective, because it doesn’t change the foxhole situation, then, regardless of attentional switchinging, there will be an involuntary immobilization response, a freeze response and dissociation.

The veteran, who acquires PTSD under inescapable aversive circumstances, is plagued by hypervigilance, hyper-arousal and sleep problems. If, on the other hand, “attentional switching” comes about due to positive, supportive, happy circumstances, its quality is of a completely different order. During SVB we calmly investigate whatever is in our attention, but not during NVB.

April 12, 2016

April 12, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes that “a genuine religious act – prayer in the foxhole – serves as a minimal unit out of which less foundational, acquired religious behavior results.” Presumably, even such an extremely aversive situation can lead to a religious experience, albeit a less foundational one.  Strand mentions  that “the acts of revising one’s self-descriptions, of seeking like-minded companions, and attending religious services, are effortful and not graceful.” After surviving his foxhole ordeal the atheist becomes a believer as the situation forced him to contemplate his death. The resulting “re-description of self”, which “functions to generate consistency between current verbal descriptions of the self and one’s actual past behavior” and “derives from past social interactions in which reinforcement accrued to the construction of self-narratives characterized by consistency between word and deed” (Skinner, 1974), is made possible by a change of environment from one in which one experiences immanent threat to one in which one experiences safety. 

Behaviorists can and should demystify this fearful begging and praying for an imaginary helper, which presumably turns the atheist into a believer, as a form of private speech, which derives from public speech. As neither the higher power nor the inner, behavior-causing agent exists, it should be considered as a form of verbal behavior. More precisely, it is covert Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) or private speech, colloquially known as negative self-talk, which is a function of overt NVB or public speech, which explains the religious conversion. Strand writes “the point of the [foxhole] example is to illustrate the relation between graceful religious behavior and effortful religious behavior” [word between parentheses added by this writer]. However, the graceful religious behavior is a form of SVB private speech, which can only derive from SVB public speech. Thus, from this natural, behavior analytic account, we should no longer explain foxhole prayer or any other effortful behavior as religious behavior.

April 11, 2016

April 11, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand explains how religious experience is induced by a situation by giving the example of a soldier in a foxhole . “Regardless of one’s belief system, when faced with death people often pray or experience peculiar self-reflective and sensory experiences (as when one’s life flashes before one’s eyes; James, 1902/1958).” Surprisingly, Strand doesn’t characterize the fighting behavior of the soldier as effortful, as belonging to the acquired category of religious behavior. Instead, he states “According to the present formulation, these experiences are genuine, graceful, and foundational. They do not arise out of previous reinforcement, but, instead, are induced by the confluence of a history of verbal training that permits organizing behavior according to the frame of self-as-infinite, and a proximal stimulus that triggers that response pattern.” 

This writer agrees there is a great difference between effortful and effortless religious behavior, but he disagrees with the notion of the soldier who fights for his life as having effortless behavior. Such absurdity is against anything we know about biology. In the face of imminent threat human beings will experience fight, flight or freeze (read: dissociation) responses. To equate these responses with effortless religious behavior is to equate religious behavior with shutting down instead of opening up. Viewed from the SVB/NVB distinction, we notice that a lot and perhaps most of our so-called religious behavior should be considered as the shutting down of our spoken communication.

Most so-called religious behavior is our private speech getting out of control, meaning, getting out of touch with our pubic speech. Speakers who acquired Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) are the most extreme example of NVB, as they may experience a safe environment as threatening and a threatening environment as safe . As already stated, effortful religious experience maps onto NVB and effortless, graceful religious behavior maps onto SVB. There is no way of changing NVB into SVB. SVB can only occur when NVB has been stopped. Likewise, we cannot be effortful and effortless at the same time.

April 10, 2016

April 10, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes “Acquired religious behavior has in common with irreligious behavior that they are both operants. Unlike irreligious behavior,  acquired religious behavior originates from induced behavior.  Induced behavior serves as the minimal unit out of which acquired religious behavior arises.” Although Strand is not aware of the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), he tries to describe why acquired religious behavior, which he previously characterized as effortful, is yet still distinctively different from irreligious behavior. It is different as it is induced. 

This writer, who knows about the SVB/NVB distinction, reads Strand’s writing through the lens of this distinction. Instead of stating that “Induced behavior serves as the minimal unit out of which acquired religious behavior arises”, he wants the reader to know that although SVB and NVB are indeed induced verbal behaviors, they arise under completely different circumstances. This becomes more apparent when Strand illustrates “the relation between the two classes of religious behavior.” The “cliché” he uses that “speaks to the religion-inducing power” (italics added by this writer) of a situation, is: “in a foxhole, no one’s an atheist.” Anyone who knows about the SVB/NVB distinction immediately realizes that only this ‘so-called’ religious behavior, the verbal behavior that is elicited in a life-threatening situation, will be NVB. 

The person in a fox-hole may have a lot of SVB history, but this  hostile situation requires he fights for his life and kills others before he himself gets killed. He may have some SVB private speech praying he will survive, but a war-situation doesn’t and can’t evoke any SVB public speech. Soldiers kill each other since the communication has broken down. The notion that religious behavior can be arising from such total madness is deeply problematic. SVB can and will only occur in an environment which is free of aversive stimulation.  Thus, effortful NVB is NOT a religious behavior at all, but a behavior that is based on fear of not surviving, of not going to heaven or of not becoming enlightened.

April 9, 2016

April 9, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand did a great job in trying to make a stand for a behavior-analytic account of religion. He writes “Distinguishing between these two forms of religious behavior [graceful-effortless and effortful-purposeful- functional] is so fundamental to religious scholarship that to ignore it in the service of explaining religion is to explain something other than religion. And yet the distinction is ignored by traditional behavior-analytic (Schoenfield, 1993) and evolutionary (Dawkins, 2006; Dennett 2006) writers of religion” [parentheses by this writer]. 

Strand wrote about these matters and his writing was of course a function of how he has been speaking about these matters. The lack of specificity of how we are able to talk about these matters is determined by our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Stated differently, Strand seems to want to have a Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), that is, conversation about religion. It is interesting to note here that a SVB conversation must be a behaviorist conversation.  

Unless behaviorists acquire SVB, the science of human behavior cannot improve human relationship. Unlike other behaviorists, Skinner had a lot of SVB. Like Skinner, Strand ‘speaks’ with his writing to this writer. He must have had a lot of SVB that he is able to write like that. His distinction between, on the one hand, foundational, effortless religious behavior as “response-independent”, that is, as respondent behavior and, on the other hand, acquired, effortful, religious behavior as operant behavior, makes total sense. Strand’s analysis that acquired religious behavior “are operants that are functional from the perspective of how the individual interacts within the worldly contingencies”, makes it seem as if there are other contingencies than “worldly contingencies.” What he is referring to is, of course, a person’s covert, private speech, mediated by his or her neural behavior. A person’s covert self-talk is a function of the overt public speech he or she has been engaged in. The person who was mainly conditioned by NVB public speech, inevitably acquires NVB private speech. Thus, acquired, effortful religious behavior derives from NVB public speech and foundational, effortless religious behavior derives from SVB public speech.  What SVB and NVB have in common with these two religious behaviors is that they are both induced.