ABSTRACT
What Spartacus said was true, and what Antoninus said was not. Yet the two slaves uttered the exact same sentence, so how can this be?
Admittedly, the puzzle is not very hard, and its solution is uncontroversial. The first person pronoun “I” is-to use a technical term-context-sensitive. When Spartacus uses it, it refers to Spartacus; when Antoninus uses it, it refers to Antoninus. So when Spartacus says “I’m Spartacus,” he expresses the true proposition that he, Spartacus, is Spartacus. And when Antoninus says it, he expresses the false proposition that he, Antoninus, is Spartacus. The sentence “I’m Spartacus” expresses different propositions when used by different people.
