Replacement -- a Sheffer stroke for belief change (Q2271189)

In the AGM logic of belief change, the two basic change operations are contraction and revision, alongside the univocal, and hence unproblematic, classical operation of expansion. In the paper under review, the author introduces a more complex operation of `replacement', in which a sentence \(x\) is removed from a belief set while at the same time another sentence \(y\) is added. This operation generalizes contraction, which can be understood as replacement of \(x\) by a tautology, and also revision, which may be seen as replacement of the negation of \(y\) by \(y\). The author proposes postulates for the operation, examines its relationship with contraction and revision, and outlines its `system of spheres' semantics. Reviewer's comment: The abstract states that the operation of replacement can have outcomes that are not obtainable by either partial meet contraction or partial meet revision. Indeed, strictly speaking, this is shown in the text, but so stated it could be misleading. For as the author also observes in the text, his replacement operations may be expressed in terms of contraction with expansion, likewise in terms of revision with expansion. The former is the more transparent: replacement of \(x\) by \(y\) in \(K\) is equal to the expansion by \(y\) of the result of contracting `not \(y\) or \(x\)' from \(K\).