Making Sense of the Paranormal: A Platonic Approach to Research Methods

In The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures eds S. Munt & O. Jenzen, Farnharm: Ashgate, 139-148.

In this chapter I argue that a Platonic perspective would benefit a trajectory of paranormal research which seeks to gain some hold on the ontological status of observed phenomena, through establishing a framework for modes of perception beyond the rational. Such a framework would provide a rationale for the co-existence of multiple perspectives and ways of knowing – but it would also require a willingness for secular researchers to be open to the imaginative and symbolic language of religious philosophy, to expand their field of enquiry to question their own epistemological assumptions, and to acknowledge that the quest for knowledge of extra-ordinary phenomena may require extra-ordinary modes of cognition.

Continue to read: ‘Making Sense of the Paranormal’

.