ABSTRACT
Platonism has been denounced by the positivistic strand of twentieth-century philosophy and science, partly because of its association with fascism and communism (Hedley 2008: 269-82) but mainly because it champions the potential of noetic cognition, a mode of perception that tends to be denied, if not destroyed, by the stronghold of the rational mind (Atkins 2011, McGilchrist 2009: 347, Stove 1991: ch. 7). However, writers such as Nelson (2001), Kripal (2010) and Shaw (2011) call for scholars to intelligently explore hidden dimensions of experience through building bridges between the public
1 How one defines ‘paranormal’ depends on one’s definition of ‘normal’. For the purposes of this chapter, I am using the OED definition: ‘supposed psychical events and phenomena … whose operation is outside the scope of the known laws of nature or of normal scientific understanding’. Via www.oed.com [accessed: 12 June 2013].
