ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of psychology's identity as scientific. The chapter argues that the relation between science and interpretation, empiricism and theory, neurology and philosophy is more complex and powerful than the increasingly conventionalized commentaries on cognitive and connectionist psychology allow. It is with reference to computation and neurology that cognitive psychology in general, and connectionism in particular, has endeavored to give a scientific explanation of the psychological. Cognitive psychology is commonly taken to be the most recent manifestation of psychology's struggle to assert a scientific identity over a philosophical, interpretive, or speculative one. Neurology and cognition, then, do not only offer a material grounding for psychological phenomena; they also offer an epistemological foundation from which a stable scientific identity can be forged. The objective of demarcation is to rule out certain ideas, statements, and epistemological practices while ruling in others.
