Evidence

4 April 2012
I was a family therapist, a radical behaviorist, an educational and a developmental, psychologist.
As a behavior analyst, I still teach how / behavioral sanity / psychological normalcy / depend on
relative rates:
less emphasis on disruptions versus more approval of the child's improved conduct.
Instead of taking goodness for granted again and again, approach children with pleasure for what
they do or have done.  Then they will trust your love and know how to attract you towards them
by behaving themselves in the manner that you prefer and to which you will pay more attention.    

Today more than ever, I realize how much people owe to evidence from conditioning scientists.
Adults - parents and educators - do influence youngsters: the children are controlled with words,
the conditioned audio-visual stimuli which affect people, their organs and physiological systems.
Many professionals are needed for ensuring healthy effects on the various levels of observation.

A healthy balance need not be a matter of symmetry.
Progressing towards healthy socialisation can mean one step back from a child versus three steps forwards towards him or her: when the positives are more frequent than not, correcting errors or saying 'Don't' will probably not bruise anyone's ego.

Neither behavior nor movement exist alone apart from either a mobile or a stationary organism.
We can stop reifying abstract nouns as though they denote concrete things with shape and weight:
the traits and the qualities are the properties of an object as well as the persons whom we observe.
To reify behavior or to personify organs is to nullify individuals and misconstrue organic functions.

Scientific evidence implies all along: subjects and their physiological systems respond to stimulus
control embedded within the conditioning processes.
Reflex and operant experiments should be reviewed.
And discussed widely. (With particular attention to Note 1) 
When conditioning principles are not misapplied, rehabilitation is generally possible through
reconditioning programs for lessening bad feelings and allowing people to cope and socialize.
I found clients quickly accept agenda that help to convert dysfunctional into mutually satisfactory relationships, (And especially after discussing medical and everyday implications in Note 1)

And now I think the time has come for taking scientists' words and experiments at face value.
           To move from an inner determination of behavior to an environmental determination, is a difficult step.
Many governmental, religious, ethical, political, and economic implications might also have been considered,
but most of the contributions do not venture that far afield .  B.F.Skinner (1904-1990)

We have a message for the present generation of radical behaviorists.
Light and sound, photons [1]  and decibels [2], make environmental determination easier to accept.
Apparently, the brain - as an organ - can actually function like a photo-electro-magnetic battery.
At any rate, sunlight is a source of life on earth, and humans need the photons for their vision;
while decibels are necessary for hearing; and normal development of speech and conversation.

On this path physics and chemistry enter biology and behavior analysis.
Amazing!  But true and just as it should be: physicists, zoologists, biochemists ... any profession
and all schools of psychology, could unite with millions of citizens for decent, humane reasons:
less hostile demands  / many more peaceful agenda / all over the globe.
I don't think I need go any further ... perhaps later ... in a paper, begun weeks ago.
Following In The Footsteps of Pioneer Behavior Scientists... an attractive thought.

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Note 1:
Pavlov reports abnormal behavior and physiology after associating food reinforcement with
strong electric current.  The fully conscious dog feels no pain and instead of drawing away,
the animal is attracted towards the potentially harmful experience ... even from a distance.
(pages 29-31; 289) It is hard to imagine no shock: not the tiniest muscular contraction, only
profuse salivation ... as the instrument comes closer ... and when electricity contacts the skin.
Such findings are relevant in environments where persons are exposed to increasingly painful
stimuli paired with reinforcement; they may become so adapted as not to feel any discomfort
and blindly welcome the sights and sounds of approaching threats, as though they were good.       
Light and sound may be spiritual Luftgeschaefte - in the air - yet they are potent variables for
worse or for better. We punish too much and don't need more evidence of the danger in that.
We need many scientists to reveal normal and natural schedules for mutual reinforcement.

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References
[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

[2]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel

Wonders Never Cease

31 March 2012

... No discussions ... still this monologue ...

muddled words ... phrases .... sentences ...

each lays the blame on the doorstep of the other; mutual;

goodwill; reciprocal; common aims: AGAIN not enough ...

I have to decide what people are mutual ABOUT

if they hate each other very much, what's so great about reciprocity

either good or evil; yes or no; one has to find out where one stands;

bad or good for one and all ... War or Peace ... choices we confront 

Life for us? Death for them? Sooner or later, every single one dies;

while I have things to write, I don't want to die - not today anyway.

introspection - no record, no report - unseen, not heard - all useless
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1 April 2012

Then I came across Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

" If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction. "

A wonderful image of running the length of the physiological corridor, from one entity to another
- searching for the one in control - or for the systems responsible for the way in which individuals
behave themselves.  But this implies we did board the wrong train.
Those metaphors exemplify theoretical explanations as to why human mortals behave as they do.
However: they reflect an inside-out causality, a sort of backwards theory about cause-and-effects.

In reality, the direction - inevitably - flows from the environment to the head and further along.
During interaction - even over continents - individuals necessarily affect one another as well as
each other's brain - impossible not to; and brain cells never see what is in front or behind them;
let alone, see and hear and know what confronts human beings.  

Had the evidence for such a message been available to behavior scientists in 1932 - who knows,
perhaps human history might have been different:
less persecution, humane relations among nations.

2 April 2012
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Man of the Church in the best sense.
I read his thoughts and life story: this lovable man, wrote a doctor reporting Bonhoeffer's death in
the concentration camp. This preacher lived and died together with many others, for his humanistic ideology. In his biography [1] I learned ecumenism promotes unity among Christian denominations, worldwide; promotes unity amongst religions through more cooperation and better understanding.

Four years ago, behaviorists published their mission statement [2] to read as follows:
" to contribute to the well-being of society by developing, enhancing and supporting the growth
and vitality of the science of behavior analysis through research, education, and practice."

Science and religion in unison!!  Surely, this is the time for concerted action to begin.
There are all those speakers and translators in the United Nations General Assembly.

3 April 2012
There is another mission statement that should be amended for wide and improved understanding.
Behavior Analysis is a member of The Federation of Associations in Brain and Behavioral Sciences
[3] whose mission reads:

  " FABBS promotes human potential and well-being by advancing the sciences of mind, brain,
and behavior.   As a coalition of scientific societies, we communicate with policy makers about
the importance and contributions of basic and applied research in these sciences."

Converting "mind" into the verb might help explain anyone's motivation for advancing sciences.
After all:  everybody minds about normal well-being, appreciation and trustworthy applications.
Brain science might ask how photons and decibels energize the brain and the nervous system.
Behavior science asks how environmental variables control the behavior of individual organisms.
Persons - and other mammals - need light to see and to look; and sound to hear and to listen.

4 April 2012
So now I have something else to write and I don't mind going beyond my professional expertise.
Wonders never cease.

15 November 2012
If I'm killed in this war, these might be my last words. Today I found my way to Lev Vygotsky,
whom I recall from my days at BGU.  Concerning Thought and Language, Wikipedia says:  "Although Vygotsky believed inner speech developed from external speech via a gradual
process of internalzation, with younger children only really able to 'think out loud,' he claimed that in its mature form inner speech would be unintelligible to anyone except the thinker, and would not resemble spoken language as we know it (in particular being greatly compressed). Hence, thought istself develops socially." 
"External speech is the process of turning thought into words. Inner speech is the opposite, it is the conversion of speech into inward thought  Inward speech, for example, contains predicates   only . Subjects are superfluous. Words are also used much more economically. One word in inner speech may be so replete with sense to the individual that it would take many words to express it in external speech."
Yes ... 'stream of consciousness' writing ... The best we can do is, write what we think.  And should this  'ring a bell' everyone may agree about how persons talk to themselves alone. Just as I did, when I dared to imagine what 'Mrs.Rat' felt after a shocking noise and what she thought when plucking up courage to press a lever again.  Behavior scientists can expand their experiments to study international mobilization for peaceful objectives.  Such knowledge is needed to make our world a safer place for mankind.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
[2] http://www.abainternational.org/aba/newsletter/vol313/index.asp
[3]  http://www.fabbs.org/