November 22, 2016

November 22, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” At this point it is becoming clear to me how wrong Panksepp is in putting all his cards on gaining broader acceptance from the neuroscience community. In spite of the fact that “the evidence for various types of affective feelings in other mammals is now rather overwhelming,” the majority of the neuroscientists are still not listening to him. Why are knowledgeable people incapable of accepting facts which refute their beliefs?

The way of talking, which maintains beliefs that prevent people from looking at the facts, needs to be addressed before these beliefs can be changed. Panksepp’s stubborn adherence to a behavior-causing “mind” didn’t gain him any support from the behaviorist community. He once told me in an email that he had started out as a behaviorist, but he became dissatisfied with it as it. It is the Panksepp the behaviorist who writes “Wherever in the ancient subcortical reaches of the mammalian brain we evoke coherent emotional behaviors with electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB), we can also demonstrate that the central states evoked can serve as rewards and punishments.”

One moment, he uses behavioral constructs, such as “rewards and punishments”, but another moment, he refers again to the “affective aspects of mind.” He goes back and forth between behaviorism and mentalism; in the former, behavior is caused by environmental stimuli, but in the latter, behavior is assumed to be caused by the “ancient subcortical reaches of the mammalian brain.” I understand his dilemma.

Panksepp deserves credit for explaining “the fundamental nature of “reinforcement” as a brain process.” How could it have been anything else? It had to be a brain process, but this of course doesn’t change the fact that our brains are also affected by environmental stimuli. Behaviorists should be grateful for the great work of Panksepp, who gives a neuroscientific analysis of reinforcement and punishment.

November 21, 2016

November 21, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fifteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” Panksepp refers to a “dual-aspect” ontology, which can be seen as a reference to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).  However, he doesn’t seem to recognize that he is merely referring to another way of talking when he writes “Perhaps we neuroscientists will also one day agree (and reveal), how mind is a manifestation of brain activity, using similar dual-aspect strategies.”

Focus on “mind,” which behaviorism views as an explanatory fiction, prevents Panksepp from even realizing what he has just written. In the aforementioned statement he links agreeing (with each other) with revealing (to ourselves to each other), a phenomenon which is essential to SVB. What he describes as agreeing, I describe as understanding and what he describes as revealing, I describe as experiencing. In SVB, we will one day understand and experience ourselves and each other.

Our future is good if we are able to inhibit NVB. I disagree with Panksepp, who thinks this depends on animal research. “If so this may first happen, at a causal level, with animal models used to study the nature of affects, especially emotional rewards and punishments.” SVB doesn’t depend on animal models, but it depends on the “emotional rewards and punishments” which we offer or force while we speak.

Undoubtedly, Panksepp wants SVB. He writes “Thus, the main goal of this essay is to encourage more open-minded discussions about the variety of primary-process affective processes in mammalian brains—emotional, homeostatic and sensory feelings—and to motivate young scholars to avoid the grand mistakes of the 20th century, which in a sense were similar to those bequeathed to us by Rene Descartes.” “Open-minded discussions” are a reference to SVB and the “grand mistakes of the 20^th century” were all caused and maintained by NVB. SVB is needed to advance neuroscience.

November 20, 2016

November 20, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fourteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” I write many responses to this paper to illustrate to the reader that there are only basically two ways of talking, which in the neuroscience as well as in marriages either have a positive or a negative outcomes. With Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) we create and maintain healthy, happy and collaborative relationships, but with Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we try dominate, manipulate, exploit, force and intimidate each other.

To assume that there is any section of society in which SVB and NVB don’t exist, is to present a false state of affairs.  Panksepp, who tries to make other neuroscientists interested in his research findings, cannot escape the sad reality that in academia, like everywhere else, NVB is the norm and SVB is the exception. No so-called paradigm shift has been able to change this. Although Panksepp is the exception, this doesn’t relieve him from the hostile environment he  is up against.

Panksepp can buttress in his writings the field neuroscience all he wants, but that is not going to make any difference in how people are talking with each other. He reaches out to behaviorists as he writes “behavioral neuroscientists have traditionally remained satisfied with careful behavioral analyses of animal behaviors and their neural correlates and causes, guided by the operationalism of logical positivism, leading to beautiful research, but regrettably weak bridges to human concerns.” SVB creates a strong bridge to human concerns.

Panksepp’s argument is in the right direction. He wants to better understand “pressing psychiatric issues such as affective disorders.” He unknowingly refers to the fall-out from NVB, the way of speaking which involves coercive behavioral control which plays an important role in causing affective disorders. Panksepp clearly doesn’t want conversation to be pro-scripted by NVB. I believe he wants to have SVB. Unless we focus on SVB we are unable to have it. I believe that if we would follow his lead we would find out about the neuro-affective basis of SVB and NVB. 

November 19, 2016

November 19, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my thirteenth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” When Panksepp writes that practitioners in neurosciences are “have the best empirical tools to address questions concerning the causal infrastructure of subjective experience” and refutes those who “will say there is no relevant evidence” as “wrong,” he is both right as well as wrong. He is right as his research proves over and over again that animals do have feelings, but he is wrong as he is still framing his research as seeing “into the mind of other creatures.” Although animals have emotional lives, they don’t have minds which cause them to act the way they do.

Panksepp is knows that behavior is caused by environmental variables, but he still peddles the common view that animals possess minds to bring attention to his primary affective processes. He even claims “Were it not for the “neuroscience revolution”, the dilemma of not being able to see into the mind of other creatures would, of course, be the path of perpetual agnosticism, with different philosophical camps arguing for their beliefs or simply deciding to disregard the issue.”

The meaningless argument in which different philosophical camps stick to their beliefs and “simply decide to disregard the issue” (of primary processes) is clearly an example of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB speakers talk in a predetermined, scripted manner and nothing new is being said. In SVB, however, speakers explore and enjoy while they talk and discover new things due to their way of talking.

What is clear from Panksepp’s paper is that struggle for attention is as common and stagnating among neuroscientists as among philosophers. Struggle for attention is one of the main characteristics of NVB. It is not the exception but the norm, which can only be overthrown by some violent upheaval, some ugly revolution. In SVB, however, there is no such fighting to get each other’s attention and no aversive stimulation.  

November 18, 2016

November 18, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twelfth response to “The basic emotional circuits of mammalian brains: Do animals have affective lives?” Unless we accept and understand our own affective lives, we will not be able to accept the affective lives of animals.  I disagree with the often heard notion that by learning about animals we learn about ourselves. It hasn’t happened and it isn’t going to happen! Panksepp wouldn’t have had to write this paper if the opposite was true. We know as little about the affective lives of animals as we know so little about our own emotions.

Although Panksepp is unhappy with the pervasive communication style in the modern neurosciences and correctly describes it as “automatic” and “autocratic”, he doesn’t really go into this topic. Anyone who is familiar with the Sound Verbal Behavior/ Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction would be telling you that Panksepp is describing NVB.

We cannot express or explore our own emotions as long as we remain engaged in NVB. Panksepp laments how his colleagues talk. “Currently a form of “ruthless reductionism” (behavior and brain count, but experience does not) rules among the functional neurosciences—among scientific practitioners who have the best empirical tools to address questions concerning the causal infrastructure of subjective experience.” Again he gives a perfect characterization of NVB, speech in which speakers and listeners disconnect from their feelings.

In NVB emphasis is always placed on understanding each other, but this verbal fixation disconnects communicators from their experience.  In SVB, however, the listener’s experience of the speaker matters. In SVB, the speaker’s voice evokes positive emotions in the listener, which then facilitate understanding, but in NVB, the speaker’s voice elicits  negative emotions in the listener, which make understanding impossible.