TALKING IT OVER

A week ago - via Google - I read a quotation from Samuel Butler (1835-1902) 

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have to live with them

and must make the best and not the worst of them.
That touches issues I had hoped readers would wish to discuss on this Blog

Other words/similar message in the 1944 lyrics by Johnny Mercer (1909-1976):
Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mr. In between

It's usually easier to see mistakes when others make them. Still, I don't mind being corrected so long as people don't signal ridicule because then I get all self-defensive, feel stressed, can't think properly.
In any case, scientists have taught me the value of bringing out the best in people, through finding
understandable explanations, something that caused a wrongdoing. I suppose the big deal is this:
timely appreciation could eliminate punishment because good words at the right time can actually strengthen persons, and maintain their law-abiding, which is far better for health and happiness. 

There I refer to what behavior scientists, operant conditioners, call schedules of reinforcement.

In 1924, John Broadus Watson (1878 -1958) published BEHAVIORISM, LECTURES IN PRINT
He is said to have coined the word 'behaviorism' and herewith is an excerpt from page 6:
The Behaviorist's Platform

The behaviorist asks: Why don't we make what we can observe the real field of psychology? Let us limit ourselves to things that can be observed, and formulate laws concerning only those things. Now what can we observe? Well, we can observe behavior - what the organism does or says. And let me make this fundamental point at once: that saying is doing - that is, behaving. Speaking overtly or to ourselves (thinking) is just as objective a type of behavior as baseball.


I believe we, behaviorists too, could affirm: that speaking silently to ourselves is private, and that
speaking to another individual, is 'as objective as baseball', since both ndividuals and playing
baseball can be observed.
I imagine speaking to oneself in solitude is objective if recorded in writing or broadcast on a radio.
We could confirm - there can be consensus - that views, wishes, thoughts, judgments, opinions
... inferences and implications ... could be converted into verbs and seen as 'verbal behaviour',
meaning social activity in which a minimum of two individuals, who speak and listen, participate.

In 1974, Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) introduced 'behaviorism' like this:
Behaviorism is not the science of human behavior; it is the philosphy of that science.
Some of the questions it asks are these:  Is such a science really possible?
Can it account for every aspect of human behavior? What methods can it use?
Are its laws as valid as those of physics and biology? Will it lead to a technology?
And if so, what role will it play in human affairs?         

Some of those questions don't yet have concensual answers.
The verb 'to think', however, is in need of some clarification.
Samuel Butler may have judged it 'unsatifactory' so let's "latch on to the affirmative".

In 1852 Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869) prepared his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.
That was the title of the first printed edition
In this century, ROGET''S INTERNATIONAL THESAURUS can help anyone, layman and scientist,
to find out what we look at, or listen to, when we say people either don't think or do so well.
Hopefully behavior science will bring concensus: a brain is an organ, needed for speech and
other activities; it is the individual who can move and stand, and sit and think.