So I guess not everyone is familiar with the Gettier counterexamples or why they are important. Let me first explain it then, so that you understand what this thread is about:
Edmund Gettier posited a few objections against the traditional definition of knowledge. For centuries, knowledge had been defined as the following structure:
1. Person P believes S.
2. Belief S corresponds to fact S.
3. Person P knows S.
This is what's known as the tripartite analysis of knowledge. Essentially it comes down to the following: if Bob believes that the apple is round, and the apple is in fact round, then Bob knows that the apple is round.
Gettier managed to come up with a few examples, however, that fulfill all of the above three requirements but still make us disinclined to speak of knowledge. Consider the following:
1) Bob looks at the clock and deducts that it's 12 o clock in the afternoon. Unbeknownst to Bob, the clock is broken. But, coincidentally, it is 12 o clock. Does Bob know that it is? We would not say so.
2) Jack believes that Pete will get the job, and Jack knows that Pete has 10 dollars in his pocket. So, Jack is justified in saying: I believe that the person who gets the job has 10 dollars in his pocket. However, pete doesn't get the job. Jack gets the job. And Jack turns out to have 10 dollars in his pocket that he wasn't aware of. Was Jack's original statement justified? Not so much.
3) Joe drives through Iowa and sees a series of red barns dotted around the countryside. He comes home and says "I saw some red barns on the way home." In fact, most of the barns turned out to be a facade, except say, two of them. Does Joe know that he saw barns? We would not be inclined to say so.
Now there have been a serious amount of attempts to resolve the Gettier counterexamples. Fred Dretske showed up with contextualism, Robert Nozick with truth-tracking, etc. It seems to me though, that the solution is actually not that difficult: since all knowledge is expressed in language, and all language is intentioned towards a certain object, all knowledge is by definition intentioned towards a certain object. And so the solution is: if a claim was based on the wrong object, it is not knowledge.
Consider this example from the first Transformers movie, slightly paraphrased to make it fit:
Dad Witwicky looks out the window of his son's bedroom and sees the entire backyard trashed and power lines broken. The electrical transformer is sparking, and so dad says: "Honey, we have a transformer problem." Of course, he does have a transformer problem: he cannot see the four actual transformers, ie Optimus Prime, Bumblebee etc, hidden around the house right below his field of vision. The reason the entire backyard got trashed was precisely due to Transformers and so his statement ironically does an accurate job at describing the situation. But it's not knowledge: clearly he's talking about the electrical device known as a transformer and not about the gargantuan alien species hiding around his house.
So what if we adapt the original tripartite definition to the following structure:
1) Person P claims S.
2) Claim S is intentioned towards Object R.
3) Object R corresponds with Claim S.
4) Person P knows S.
Now to some this may be too vague, and I get why. Because let's use the example of Joe in Iowa who sees barns. Whether or not the barns exist doesn't change his personal experience that he saw what he perceived to be barns. You could say according to my definition he doesn't know that there are barns because the barns he refers to don't consist entirely of barns but also of fake facades. But what difference would that make in Joe's experience? And I will concede to that. But I will also say this: as long as Joe simply talks about having seen barns, we aren't talking about whether or not he knows there are. He is simply confirming a sensory experience when he talks about what he saw. So perhaps we will also need to consider this: only when Joe says that he knows that there are barns along the road he travelled down are we able to test the validity of his claims.
If he says that he knows he saw barns he means either
1) He knows that he had a sensory experience
2) He knows that the objects are barns
The former we can't dispute. There is no way for us to put it to the test and therefore we have to take him at his word. The latter however can be confirmed. That he saw what he perceived to be barns is indisputable, whether or not they are barns is not. So then the following structure reveals itself:
1) Person P claims knowledge S in explicit (or implicit uncontroversial) language.
2) Knowledge claim S is intended towards a certain object R.
3) Object R corresponds with knowledge claim S.
4) Person P knows knowledge claim S.
I think that particularly the explicit formulation of a knowledge claim is important. Knowledge is otherwise too vague. If someone simply reports a sensory experience, we can't claim they know anything about what they say. If Bob simply reports that the clock in the first example points at 12 o clock, then we can't claim he knows anything (other than that he knows he had a sensory experience of this clock). Only when he explicitly states, or makes it implicity clear, that he knows that it is 12 o clock, then we can see if the object he based his claim on is capable of reproducing that claim. Obviously at 12:01 it won't be able to.
What I'm looking for is some feedback, preferably counterexamples, as to why I could be wrong. It seems odd to me that so many established academics have not yet devised a solution, yet this one seems so obvious. Is that because a counterexample is readily available? I can't seem to immediately think of one.
Any response would be appreciated.