Institutions and organizations are affected by the prevailing beliefs, resources, cultural traditions, etc., that compose their context. This statement—expressed in these terms—would not lead to any major disagreement. However, the vagueness and polysemy of the lay vocabulary hide complexities and pitfalls that scientific terminology should avoid. In that direction, behavior analysts could instead say that culturants are affected by a cultural milieu. But despite advancing our scientific terminology, the concept of cultural milieu still involves ambiguities. In our target article (Sampaio & Haydu, 2023), we analyzed previous work by Houmanfar and colleagues (Ardila Sánchez et al., 2019; Houmanfar & Rodrigues, 2006; Houmanfar et al., 2009, 2010, 2020) to show why that was the case. The reply by Ardila-Sánchez and Hayes (2023, this issue) debates some of our arguments, but presents further evidence on the urgent need to clarify what the cultural milieu actually is.

Ardila-Sánchez and Hayes (2023, this issue) tried to clarify “three different stimulus functions and stimulus objects assigned to the cultural milieu.” One of them was “factors comprising the setting in which the interlocking behavioral contingencies [IBCs] are generating products.” That clearly relates to previous presentations of the concept by Houmanfar and colleagues and is compatible with our presentation of the concept of cultural antecedents. According to Ardila-Sánchez and Hayes, another component of the cultural milieu would be “institutional stimulus functions with respect to the shared responding of individuals in interlocking behavioral contingencies.” As the authors precisely state, the relations of institutional stimulus functions with shared responses and cultural behavior do not necessarily participate in IBCs and metacontingencies. We could say that Kantor’s (1982) “cultural psychology” does not refer specifically to culturant selection. In sum, we agree that institutional practices and metacontingencies are related but relatively autonomous, and that this relation should be further explored. We contend, nevertheless, that this can be accomplished by any behavior analyst interested in culturo-behavior science, regardless of their preferred philosophical assumptions (see next section).

Finally, another component attributed to the cultural milieu by the authors was as “discriminative stimuli that set the occasion for the aggregate products.” However, we must contend that discriminative stimuli are behavioral events—antecedent environmental events affecting the response classes of an individual (e.g., Pierce & Cheney, 2017)—while aggregate products are cultural events, describing environmental events produced by responses of two or more individuals (e.g., Glenn et al., 2016). Indeed, Houmanfar and Rodrigues (2006, p. 23), in the very article cited by the Ardila-Sánchez and Hayes (2023, this issue), clarify that they are proposing the concept of cultural milieu as an antecedent term in the metacontingency that is parallel—not a synonym—to an antecedent in the behavioral contingency. Furthermore, Houmanfar et al. (2010), in the other article cited by Ardila-Sánchez and Hayes, simply do not employ the expression “discriminative stimuli.” Therefore, affirming that the cultural milieu functions as or is composed of “discriminative stimuli that set the occasion for the aggregate products” not only confuses different levels of analysis, exemplifying a category error, but also misrepresents how the concept has been previously presented. The need for clarification is evidenced here once more.