July 25, 2016

 July 25, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fortieth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). I remember having an animal lab in my first and only class on learning during my undergraduate study in Psychology at California State University Chico. My knowledge base about radical behaviorism was zero. I couldn't understand what we were doing squeezed into this lab. Looking back I figure many students must have felt the same way. It was hard to grasp these difficult and new behaviorist concepts (such as negative and positive reinforcement and punishment) in a pigeon lab which barely fit the large size of people in our class. Although the teacher was nice and I passed with a B, I wasn't able to learn much. 

I think that linking clinical topics to animal topics (instead of the other way around), could prove to be “a fruitful path to have students actively study a behavioral perspective.” Skinner developed his operant science due to his empirical work with animals, but radical behaviorists have ignored the problems involved in how people talk with each other for way too long. 

The author’s suggestion that “with cognitive psychology there are fewer barriers, and what barriers do exist are more easily overcome,” has proven to be totally wrong. SVB is a matter of having no barriers at all, but in NVB all the communicators actively maintain their barriers. The issue is not, as these authors suggest, if we are having more or fewer barriers. 

We make a big mistake if we believe that addressing “epistemological obstacles” is “unconventional” and therefore better than conventionally addressing the worth of radical behaviorism as a “psychological framework”, by providing evidence that “can be marshalled in its favor or disfavor.” SVB teaches us that there is nothing unconventional about the barriers we experience while we communicate; NVB is our only barrier.

July 24, 2016

July 24, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my thirty-ninth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). These authors put the horse behind the wagon. “Once these barriers are explicated we believe that there are three strategies that the radical behaviorist can undertake to help the student react to them.” Teachers must “explicate” these “barriers”, but how are they supposed to do that? If they engage in  Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), they will focus on “strategies that the radical behaviorist can undertake to help the student react to them.”

Whether we acknowledge this or not, NVB has resulted into where radical behaviorism and mankind is today. If radical behaviorists are first going to address the importance Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), there is no need for “strategies” to “help students react to them.”

If radical behaviorists would teach SVB, they would kill two birds with one stone; 1) we need to talk with each other to address and solve our problems and 2) we need science to lodge us out of “commonsense antecedent beliefs,” which are insufficient to answer “all our questions about a subject.”  Instead of engaging “in scientific behavior because our current account is in some ways unsatisfactory”, behaviorists should emphasize that we must have SVB, as NVB, our “current account,” is by any scientific standard totally unacceptable.

The suggestions made by these authors haven’t worked. Instead of wasting time over whether or not there is free will or “evidence for determinism,” it is much more effective to teach students about SVB and NVB. Broader acceptance of radical behaviorism will readily be  accomplished by SVB, which concerns the students more directly than animal experiments. “Having students conduct experiments” not with animals, but with humans and with the SVB/NVB distinction “puts them in contact with the reinforcing properties of prediction and control.”

July 23, 2016

July 23, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my thirty-eight response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). Someone who is conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is likely to take offense with “Radical behaviorists” who “contend that all behavior is determined.” NVB rules because people believe and talk others into believing free will. Free will is like a religion which is passed from one generation to the next. With it comes the tragedy mankind hasn’t solved. Our tragedy is not our belief in free will, but our inability to communicate who we really are.

Those familiar with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) experience and know that authentic communication can only occur among equals and that it always takes two to tango. Spoken communication is a social, reciprocal phenomenon, but in NVB we are no longer in contact with natural contingencies due to imaginary hierarchical differences. Once we engage in SVB, we realize what nonsense is purported by our NVB.

SVB goes way beyond “helping students overcome barriers to radical behaviorism.” It is not a “strategy” to better deal with things, but an entirely new way of communicating. Radical behaviorists can only “acknowledge how their position deviates from what is commonly taken to be true” if they can model this novel way of talking. Since this has never been their focus most “epistemological barriers” have remained. 

People will accept radical behaviorism as they don’t feel threatened by the fact that it differs from their “prior beliefs”. SVB is not some pedagogical tool, which will only be used by some “good teachers”. SVB can teach radical behaviorism and other sciences to us as it relieves us from our superstitions and struggles. Most importantly, SVB restores in each communicator the ability to be and to express him or herself.