Brian Glenney

In Philosophy of Mind, Glenney has specialized in sensory perception, from its ancient history[9] to contemporary empirical considerations.[10] He is co-editor with Jose Filipe Silva of The Senses and the History of Philosophy.[11] Glenney also wrote the entry on Molyneux's Problem for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[12] The over 300 year old problem asks whether a newly sighted person might immediately identify shapes by sight alone that were previously known to touch.

Glenney provides a novel answer: that due to the complexity of visual processing, there are many ways to both see and fail to see shapes, the success of an answer being dependent on context rather than the original intent of the question. Glenney offers, "the first pluralist response: many different answers, both yes and no, are individually sufficient as an answer to the question as a whole" and thus researchers should "take the question to be cluster concept of sub-problems. This response opposes traditional answers that isolate specific perceptual features as uniquely applicable to Molyneux’s question and grant viability to only one reply." This "pluralist" methodology is well received, given that clear and definitive answers in the context of the original question are wanting. "Possibly, as highlighted by Glenney, the most parsimonious way to face the issue raised by Molyneux’s question is to avoid the polarization of the answer into the categories of “yes” and “no”. Indeed, the most promising approaches seem to derive from the combination of diverse techniques, addressing both the behavioural and the neural aspects of this issue."[13]

Glenney has also written several papers on a little known essay on sensory perception "Of the External Senses" by famed economist Adam Smith[14] which provides the first account of perception based on his famous concept of "sympathy." In fact, Glenney goes so far as to argue that Smith's concept of sympathy in his central ethical theory is derived from this little known essay.[15]

Glenney is also a scholar and practitioner of Skateboarding, holding a unique claim that it does not fit a designated class or kind, being neither a sport, nor lifestyle, nor subversive activity.[16] Glenney's appearances on Thrasher Magazine with the skateboard crew The Worble led to the co-creation of the iconic figure Manramp, a personality known for using plywood to help skateboarders utilize otherwise impossible obstacles in the streets.[17]

Glenney is an original member of the notorious graffiti crew: Big Time Mob. He was also a member of Seattle punk bands: Human Struggle and The Guilty, with friends Damien Jurado and David Bazan[18]