Weak emergence and external relations

I shall argue that one necessary condition for entities to weakly emerge from their own emergence bases is that such bases include external relations. In Section 1 I shall introduce weak emergence and the distinction between internal and external relations, as well as three strategies to prove the externality of a relation. In Sections 2 and 3 I shall provide inductive support for my thesis by showing that several versions of weak emergentism entail that the emergence bases of weakly emergent entities need to include external relations. In Section 4 I shall construct an inference to the best explanation: my thesis provides the best explanation for some data about weakly emergent entities and their own bases. Finally, in Section 5, I shall consider another formulation schema for weak emergence, i.e., that illustrated by Jessica Wilson.