Abstract
Many philosophers who believe in strong ontological emergence do not believe in the existence of external relations, while many philosophers who believe in the existence of such relations do not believe in strong ontological emergence. I shall try to demonstrate in this paper that emergentists might benefit from accepting external relations in their fundamental ontology.
Firstly, I shall clarify what I mean by "strong ontological emergence", "external relations" and "powers" - since I shall primarily define emergence in terms of powers. In particular, I shall distinguish between basic and non-basic powers, their possession and their activation, and I shall give a characterization of emergent powers.
Afterwards, I shall explore three different varieties of relations that seemingly ground the emergence of emergent powers (RGEs, i.e., Relations that Ground Emergence). Finally, I shall consider the consequences of accepting the existence of RGEs for a physicalistic ontology and I shall deal with two objections based on the notion of bruteness.