Behavior passivity refers to the nature of behavior, all behavior, including all human behavior, of any type or level of complexity. Like all real events in nature, on this planet, in this universe, behavior is natural, that is, it comprises natural events. It is an inevitable reaction.
Misestablished reality involves behaviors of knowing some stimuli as the causes of some sensory–neuron firings that are actually not the stimuli that induced the sensory–neuron firings. This kind of inaccurate behaviors of knowing, regarding particular inputs, leaves the reality of these inputs misestablished. This means that these inputs likely affect subsequent behavior with similar inaccuracy.
In discussing the boundaryless biological continuum for life forms that involves non–life and life, the last column pointed to the relevance of the Law of Cumulative Complexity. This column digresses to consider this law more closely.
The implied problems get compounded when people use “self awareness” interchangeably with “consciousness.” To reduce confusion, we generally avoid the self–awareness term. However, some uses of it, or at least of awareness, seem legitimate so let’s explore them a little.
Consciousness involves covert behaviors and the contingencies that produce them. The behavior–behavior relations that constitute covert behavior chains, including those typical of consciousness, can occur as either respondent or operant behaviors.
The development of the natural science of behavior, including the rise of its philosophy of science that we call behavioral naturalism, led to an increasing interest in answering long–standing human questions like those surrounding consciousness. Scientists began dealing with some of the difficulties in dealing with notions like “awareness” and “self awareness” scientifically.
As an example of unconscious seeing, a hiker, engaged in a focused conversation with a companion, will, under direct stimulus control, step over an unconsciously seen football–size rock on the trail. Later, however, the hiker cannot describe the rock as it was not consciously seen. If one is to re–see it later, perhaps due to a contingency involving a request for details about the rock, one must have first seen it consciously.
Any and all of the verbal relations that the last several columns covered—mands, tacts, intraverbals, codics, duplics—occur in normal interactions between and among people. Each of these verbal relations constitutes a different kind of behavior repertoire. What does that mean? Your everyday conversational experience provides you with nearly unlimited examples.
Coverage of the vast verbal–behavior topic begins with some of its recent history, and then with some ancient history regarding the relation of evolution and physiology to verbal behavior. These provide a foundation for defining not only verbal behavior but also the verbal community. After that come some characteristics of verbal–behavior analysis.
Since the causes of behavior are cast in terms of “contingencies,” the time has come to make some sense of the term “contingency.” This term stands in generically for the range of “causes” of behavior the way other terms cannot, such as “stars,” in astrology, or “selves,” in psychology.
