How to make post-Lion Finders find special directory . and ..? Before OS X 10.7, you can navigate to the parent directory in Finder using Go to (Shift+Command+G) to the special directory ... 

However, since Lion Finder is no longer able to do this and gives he error message The folder can't be found.

Is there a way to enable Finder to do so?
If you simply want to go 'up' in Finder, you can use the keyboard shortcut ⌘↑.

This is the equivalent of cd .. which is what you would achieve by 'going' to the .. folder. Alternatively, you can select Go → Enclosing folder from the menu bar. A custom keyboard shortcut can be assigned to this menu item using App Shortcuts.