Friday, March 25, 2016

July 7, 2014



July 7, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Yesterday, this writer spoke with his behaviorist friend Arturo Clavijo from Colombia. He is a professor in behaviorism at the University of Bogota. This writer got in contact with him after he read one of his papers "The Psyche As Behavior" (2013), which explained the development of behaviorism: from Watson’s stimulus-response Behaviorism, to Skinner’s response-stimulus molecular radical behaviorism,  to Baum’s molar approach. It was apparent from Arturo’s paper that these are related and could be seen as emerging from each other under different environmental circumstances. Ever since this writer has been in contact with Arturo, he has felt more comfortable writing about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), his extension of Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior. 


It was after yesterday’s conversation that this writer realized that he has been writing about behaviorism because of Arturo’s approval. He sent him a bunch of his journal entries and Arturo found his writing very interesting. Arturo now wants to co-author and publish a real scientific paper about SVB. He even said that there is so much to it that there is enough material for various papers. He talked about a situation in which he successfully explained SVB to one of his colleagues. He praised this writer and indicated that his reading of the journal entries had really enhanced his understanding about SVB.  This writer is extremely happy with this friendship and looks forward to producing this paper. Arturo wants him to prepare by reading certain behaviorist literature. 


Excited about this offer, this writer reread the journal entries he had sent to Arturo. After he was done, he realized that his writing had occurred after his conversations with Arturo. He didn’t know before that it was because of Arturo that he had started to write. Arturo had shown interest in his behaviorist writing and that had stimulated him to produce more and more. Of course, he had spoken with Arturo on Skype. Their SVB relationship had set the stage for this writer’s writing. 


Other authors, who this writer had tried to contact, had also suggested that he should write about SVB. These authors, however, didn’t engage in SVB with him and, consequently, this writer wasn’t stimulated by them to write about it. He wrote back to them to explain why he thought that he needed to speak with them again and why writing wasn’t going to make any sense if it wasn’t possible to talk. 

Most of his writing wasn’t reinforced and most of it was never even responded to. It was because he talked with Arturo that his urge to write was enhanced. Before, this behavior had not been stimulated. As stated, there had been many others who had said to him that he should write about his thoughts, but none of these suggestions had made him become more serious about his writing, because these people didn’t  engage in SVB with this writer.  It took 56 years for this writer to become a writer and to be able to take his own writing more serious. Moreover, it took SVB with a behaviorist to stimulate this writer to write about his behaviorism. 


Coincidentally, yesterday this writer also received an email from Noam Chomsky. Chumsky had too suggested that this writer should write about his views. Many years ago, before this writer knew anything about behaviorism, he had contacted Chimsky in an attempt to point out to him that, although he is a celebrated speaker and writer, he is not listening to himself while he speaks.  Chamsky dismissively ended the phone conversation and refused to discuss this topic.   


After this writer became a behaviorist, he found out about the beef Chymsky has with behaviorism. Chemsky had written a strong criticism of Skinner's seminal work Verbal Behavior (!957), but the bottom line was that Chpmsky, like so many others who criticize behaviorism,  didn't even understand Skinner's views and totally misrepresented his operant science. 

This writer had written to Chbmsky that his way of talking is sounding incendiary and negative and making SVB impossible.   Chdmsky wrote back “But you really shouldn’t keep the insights to yourself.  You should publish them, for the benefit of the thousands of people who come to talks of mine, often in overflow rooms, and it could also save me a lot of trouble.  I wouldn’t have to spend a huge amount of time traveling and speaking, or even writing dozens of letters a week saying, with regret, that I can’t accept an invitation because there’s no time.”   

Chxmsky is troubled by his own success, which, as stated by this writer, has not led and could not lead to the improvements which he would have liked to see.  Chfmsky is a classical example of a Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) speaker, someone who talks at you, not with you. The three reasons why the sound of our voice changes from SVB to NVB can be glanced from Chgmsky’s email message. 


First, there is what this author calls the 1) fixation on the verbal. Chskymsky focuses only on the content of his speech.  His refusal to speak with this author about how he sounds is reinforced by “thousands of people who come to talks of mine.” Since they all come to listen to what he says and not to how he says it, they are all part of the same ubiquitous delusional speech pattern in which what we say supposedly is more important than how we say it. Moreover, Chwmsky’s fans are people who tolerate and expect to be talked at. They all have the same fictitious belief that a change of content is going to improve human relationship. 


Chzmsky, who sounds exasperated by the effort that goes into his speaking, writes about “talks of mine”, which indicates that he believes in an inner agent which does all the talking.  Even though he describes the pressure to answer others - of which his speech obviously is a function - he can’t consider the scientific fact that he is not causing his own behavior.


The second reason why, even while thousands of people are listening to him, Chupreemsky mainly produces NVB, is because of his 2) outward orientation. It is evident from his email that his attention is only with others (on me), but not with himself.  Chhhhhhhmsky is so busy with others, that he has no time for himself. 


One wonders why a person of his status would even bother to respond to someone as insignificant as this writer, who wants him to focus on himself? His reason is, of course, to prove that this writer is wrong and that he is right. After all, this writer doesn’t have the thousands of people who want to listen to him.  Indeed, this writer wouldn't be satisfied with people merely listening to him. His verbal behavior is a function of the people who want to talk with him and have SVB.
Chipmonky’s outward orientation makes him neglect himself. He is preoccupied with others, who are wrong or bad. This affects the sound of his voice. 


A third reason why Chrumpsky, or anyone else with NVB, simply sounds terrible, is the communication habit 3) to struggle for attention. Chonutsky says he has no time. Everything he does is a function of his race against the clock. He tries to say as much as possible in as short a time as possible, but, ironically, he becomes more and more lengthy and tiring in the process, because he is an authority and people want to hear more. A similar process occurs with pop stars. People want to hear their music over and over. If those who become pop stars can’t handle the demand which was also created by their own need for attention and admiration, they don’t know how to say no and they are lived by the demands of their fans.  


Chachacomsky doesn’t have a minute to himself, he struggles not being able to provide an answer that effects real change. Even though he may be right about what is wrong in this world, since he is not a behaviorist, he has no solutions!!!
Cheapsky is trapped in pseudo-knowledge that he has to change the world all by himself and that those in the trenches for the grass-roots struggle for change have to be like him: infuriated and always busy with problems. His struggle, to carry the weight of the world, isn’t informed by the science of behavior, but by politics. 

 
Choinksky would actually like someone like this writer to deliver him from the hassle of always being in demand. This writer is reaching out to him and would like to talk with him, but Cshamesky thinks this author can only reach people if he puts his thoughts into writing. This writer didn’t contact Chiminalsky to write to him. This writer doesn’t think that any written words can replace spoken words. 


These written words can at best refer to spoken words, but spoken words are entirely different. Chlemielsky speaks like he writes, but this writer writes like he speaks. Chofficultky’s struggle between what he is feeling and thinking is audible in the dreadful sound of his voice. Chamanisky has no clue that he sounds this way because this is how his audience makes him sound. His audience consists of people who want him as a leader, but he can’t and doesn’t want to be a leader. 

Thursday, March 24, 2016

July 5, 2014



July 5, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 


There are currently many reinforcing things happening in this writer’s life. His job has brought him into a new environment, which requires more restrained and which, therefore, is more reinforcing to him. Also, he talked with Dr. Fraley, one of the founders of behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior. Actually, he talked with him twice.  Both phone calls were very positive and Fraley fully understood and affirmed the importance of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). He suggested that this author gets in touch with other behaviorologists to elaborate on SVB. 

This kind of recognition is huge for this writer.  By reading Fraley’s papers, he found out that behaviorologists form a relatively small subset of behaviorists whose focus is to establish behaviorology as a separate field, next to biology, physics and chemistry. Behaviorologists don’t want to be any longer part of psychology. In most psychology departments behaviorism is represented as one of the theoretical approaches. As this doesn’t do justice to the science of human behavior and as behaviorists are not very well represented within the field of psychology, behaviorologists have decided that the time has come to establish their own separate field. They do this because they don’t want do concessions to psychology, which adheres to the unscientific view that behavior is caused and controlled by an internal, autonomous agent or self.

July 1, 2014



JuLY 1, 2014

Written by maximus Peperkamp, M.s. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Every morning this writer writes about talking with himself. During the day, as part of his profession, he talks a lot with others, but when he gets up, he takes time to talk with himself. Although he writes about it, he is listening to himself while he speaks. Nobody told him to do this. Even he himself doesn’t tell himself to do it. He likes to do it, because when he does, he can link his speaking with his listening behavior. 


Today many thoughts happen, which haven’t happened before. He realizes that his reference to himself doesn’t mean that his behavior is caused by him. He recognizes aother way of talking is needed. The ‘he’ he is referring to not real. What is there is a behaving body responding to stimuli in an environment. Far away cars are heard and closer by a bird is singing. A feeling of peacefulness is enhanced by the cool morning air and the open window. the early morning is so quiet.


When this writer began to refer to himself in third-person, when instead of ‘I’, he began tp refer to himself as ‘he’, a change occurred in his writing. It led to an understanding of the power of words. He still uses the word ‘He’, but this reference to ‘himself’ is now considered as a verbal behavior, which he wants to explore.


‘he’ is a body sitting on the floor in a room. ‘he’ is created by words of public speech, which appear in front of ‘him’ on a screen and inform the reader, in this case ‘himself’, about a form of private speech, which has lost its relevance. Referring to ‘himself’ as ‘he’ is as problematic as referring to ‘himself’ as ‘I’. There is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘he’, there is only a location, a body in space and time, which adjusts to the events as they unfold. 


The stimuli this writer responds to in this writing are mostly private. no one would ever know about them if ‘he’ didn’t talk or write about them. As a consequence of this response to private stimuli positive thoughts and feelings are evoked which are emotionally and intellectually stimulating. It is powerful and new because others can understand this too. 


Oddly, this letter type, which is called “castellar” is kind of annoying. These harsh letters are perceived as negative visual stimuli and they evoke thoughts about walls and feelings of being walled off. There is nothing inside of these walls that this writer is interested in. ‘He’ is interested in what is outside of the wall, in the environmental stimuli which cause this private speech. Thus, ‘He’ finds ‘himself’ outside of the wall that is created by words. the non-verbal reality exists only outside our wall of words. The castle we call ‘self’ is a fabrication of words. The ‘self’ isn’t real, but the body is real and it is much more than just a word.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

June 30, 2014



June 30, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

During yesterday’s seminar we were talking about all the things this writer has been writing about recently. Because of all his writing his words came out fluently and without any hesitation. All participants stayed from the beginning till the end, which means, they were there at 13:00pm when the group began and they left at 17:00pm when the group ended. Everyone was intrigued with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The writer created a new rule that if people would produce SVB, he would raise his right hand, but when they would produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), he would raise his left hand. This non-threatening, non-punitive, nonverbal gesture proved to be very effective, more effective then any verbal explanation. 


Initially, each time he raised his right hand to indicate SVB or his left hand to indicate NVB, he also gave a brief verbal description, which, because of the nonverbal hand-signal, immediately allowed participant’s attention to go to their nonverbal experience.  His verbal description, however, stimulated participants to verbally explain to themselves what SVB means. When they were made aware by this writer’s raised left hand that they were producing NVB, they asked him why this was the case. This writer only then gave them minimal feedback and simply instructed them to “try to produce SVB instead.”  They stopped and tried and succeeded and if they didn’t, other participants came to their aid and shaped their speech by giving them their version of SVB. In the process, not only the person who was trying to move from NVB to SVB was experiencing and explaining SVB and understanding the distinction, but the entire group was involved in the discovery that was done by one person. 


This writer realizes the importance of this shaping process by the whole group for both the individual as well as for each of the individual members of the group. He had done a similar group experiment in one of his psychology classes, which wasn’t about SVB, but which success had set the stage for yesterday’s experiment. 


The aforementioned experiment, which he had also explained and referred to during yesterday’s seminar, was a straightforward demonstration of operant conditioning. One student was asked to be a participant. His behavior was going to be reinforced and punished by the other students.  He was asked to leave the class so that the students could be instructed on how to condition his behavior. He was to take a chair away from the table in the front of the class, drag it to the back of the class and then sit on it while facing the wall. The students were instructed to only say “Yes” when his behavior approximated this task or say “No” when it didn’t. Initially, the student didn’t know what to do, but soon the reinforcing “Yesses” and the punishing “No’s” provided the stimuli to drag the chair to the back of the class, where he sat on it, facing the wall. The “Yesses” immediately increased the correct behavior and the “No’s” decreased not-wanted behavior. In front of everyone’s eyes behavior had been shaped by its consequences. 


A couple of matters about this experiment need to be further addressed. The student who was the participant was willing to participate. He felt reinforced when he did what he was supposed to do and even showed some frustration when he received negative feedback in the form of “No’s”. This means that he already understood that “Yes” means right and “No” means wrong. These did not need to be conditioned, these were already conditioned.  Also the English language was already in place. If the feedback had been “Ja” and “Nee”, which is Dutch for “Yes” and “No”, he would have been clueless.   


Furthermore, he participated as best as he could because trusted that we were not going to do anything weird or harmful to him, because we had promised this to him beforehand. The establishing operation which made the “Yesses” and the “No’s” effective was that the student wanted to do the right thing. It also needs to be said that this was already part of his behavioral repertoire, which didn’t need to be conditioned. What is clear from this brief excursion into the behavioral history of the participant is that his history set the stage for him to become a participant.  He raised his hand immediately when this writer asked for a participant. 


The approximations given by the participants in yesterday’s seminar were not the straightforward “Yesses” or “No’s”, but SVB was definitely understood as right hand raised, as a “Yes” and NVB was understood as left hand raised, as a “No”. In other words, a rule had been established.  Once the rule had been made clear it was very easy to follow. No one has any problem stopping for a red light and driving with green. All communication problems can be solved by rule-governed behavior, but they can’t be addressed without rules. As the traffic light example indicates: there is no problem! The idea that there is a problem is problem. Rules of traffic are necessary, we agree on them because it makes traffic safe. Likewise, the rule of SVB makes our communication safe. Without this rule, we can go on with NVB ad infinitum. Since we lack this rule we do!


In our society we agree on rules against murder. To kill each other is against the law. This author, who is able to predict and control the behavior of others, who reliably and repeatedly makes people stop NVB and produce SVB, predicts that one day we will simply rule out NVB. He is already implementing such rules in the Psychology classes which he teaches. In the same way as the behavior of the student was controlled by his class mates, NVB was ruled out during the seminar due to the feedback from others. 


The person, who ignores the speed limit, who ignores the agreed upon rule, is punished for breaking the rule. Unlawful behavior will be decreased as long as there are negative consequences and lawful behavior increases if it is reinforced.  We can accomplish things so much more easily when we stop trying to invent the wheel and adhere to rules. This is how cultures thrive.  Yet, NVB is equally rule-governed as SVB. And, the rules that apply to SVB are not the same as those that apply to NVB. Indeed SVB and NVB are based on different sets of rules. 


Different countries, different environments have different rules and in England people drive on the left. This shows that there is no right or wrong about rules. Rules matter because we are adhering to them. In England drivers are reinforced for driving on the left, but in the United Stated people are reinforced for driving on the right. The verbal community decides what rules the individual organism must follow. The rules that apply to SVB are not any better than the rules that apply to NVB; driving to the left isn’t any better than driving to the right. 


A culture in which people have SVB is definitely different from one in which they have NVB. A country in which we drive on the left is different than one in which we drive on the right. An environment in which we feel safe and supported will give rise to different behaviors than one in which we fear and fight for our life. 


In each of the above, behavior is reinforced by the environment that we are in. This is not a choice that anyone individually makes. One finds oneself in an environment which existed before one's arrived. Likewise, different environments will continue to exist after one has died. One is affected by one’s environment whether one knows it, whether one admits it, accepts it, realizes it, understands it or not. Our freedom is determined by our understanding how we are affected by our environment.   


Our behavior: driving on the left or on the right, struggling to survive or living a peaceful life, talking with (SVB) or talking at (NVB) each other, is always determined by our environment. In certain environments, we can drive on the left, but to do so would be very dangerous, because the rule is to drive on the right. In another environment, we may try to live a peaceful life, but to do so would be against the rule and not help us to survive.  It doesn't make any sense to try to have SVB when everyone has NVB. To do so would be to go against the rule. The idea that we can individually change the rule is false. We can, of course, take the law into our own hands and do whatever we want, but even this rule-breaking behavior, this denial of the rules is also determined by our environment. 


Thus, in criminal environments different rules apply, in political environments different rules apply, in religious environments different rules apply, in scientific environments different rules apply, because each environment require and therefore condition different behaviors.  Certain scientific rules apply across environments and generalize across cultures.  The rule that we use rules to govern our behavior is as true in one culture as it is in another. SVB and NVB are response classes that occur in every language, but at different rates and intensity level.