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[Expositions 8.1 (2014) 50–58]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 

Evolution and Value 
 
FRANCISCO J. AYALA 
University of California, Irvine 
 
“Man is an ethical animal; in fact he is the ethical animal. His ethicizing is a biological 
adaptation necessary to success in his way of life.” 

G.G. Simpson, Biology and Man1 
  
 
Values are a universal attribute of humankind. All humans have moral values; that is, they accept 
standards according to which their conduct is judged right or wrong, good or evil. People have 
also other sorts of values: economic, aesthetic, gastronomic, and so on. 

Where do moral values come from? Some moral values are widespread and perhaps universal, 
like not to kill, not to steal, and to honor one’s parents. But the moral values by which people 
judge their behavior vary at present from culture to culture and have changed in important ways 
through historical times. Different ethnic groups, different nationalities, different tribes, and even 
different individuals exhibit different moral values and different norms by which they evaluate 
their actions. Think of the difference between a modern American and an Islamic fundamentalist 
with respect to the rights of women, or between most modern Americans and the official doctrine 
of the current Russian government concerning homosexuality.2 Darwin expressed horror at the 
burning of widows by Hindus and thought absurd the proscription of Muslim women to expose 
their faces. 

Diversity of values occurs also among individuals within a single country or a single cultural 
group. Among modern Americans as well as among individuals in other Western countries, there 
is considerable variation, for example, concerning the rights of homosexuals. Even with respect 
to seemingly universal values, there is variation among cultural groups and among individuals 
when we get down to specifics. The value of human life and the commandment “Thou shall not 
kill” would seem at first universal, but abortion will be accepted by some and not others. When a 
newborn will face a life of misery because of physical handicaps, or when a child is unwanted by 
the mother, it would seem, to many but not to all, that abortion is the more ethical option. 
Withdrawing life-support machinery from an unconscious or intensely suffering terminal patient 
will be judged by many as an act of mercy, not a crime. Killing the enemy is perceived as a duty 
for a soldier engaged in war. 

Ethical values have substantially changed through history and continue to change in recent 
times. Apartheid was the official policy of the government of South Africa, and variations of 
apartheid were practiced for centuries until recently in the South of the United States. Our 
individual and collective responsibility towards nature as a whole has become accepted by 
people only recently. The philosopher Peter Singer has argued that people have gradually over 



51  Ayala 
 

 

the course of history enlarged the range of beings whose interests they value as they value their 
own.3 And as Steven Pinker has written, 
 

Much of our recent social history […] consists of the moralization or 
amoralization of particular kinds of behavior […]. F]or example […], smoking is 
now treated as immoral […]. At the same time, many behaviors have been 
ammoralized, switched from moral failings to lifestyle choices. They include 
divorce, illegitimacy, working mothers, marijuana use and homosexuality.4 

 
Where do moral values come from? I will, first, explore the origins of language, another 

human universal. All humans, and only humans, communicate by means of symbolic, creative 
language. Animals phylogenetically close to us, for example chimpanzees, communicate by 
gestures and sounds. Humpback whales communicate by seemingly specific sounds. The 
“language” of the bees and other social insects, as well as the chemical communication of other 
insects, is symbolic, but it is genetically determined, not creative. 

It seems that when we consider the origins of human language we may refer to either one of 
two different issues. One issue concerns the origin of the human capacity for symbolic language. 
The other issue is the origin of specific languages, such as English, Spanish, or Chinese. The 
human capacity for language required the evolution of three novel features that happened in 
humans and only in humans. First, in order to have human language we need an organ able to 
produce sounds capable of modulating vowels and consonants; second, humans need to have the 
means of phonetic and semantic identification so as to associate meaning with specific 
combinations of vowels and consonants; and third, human language requires the combination of 
phonetic and semantic units capable of generating an unlimited number of messages subjected to 
syntactic rules. Human language is creative in two different ways. We combine basic sounds, 
phonemes, to form words; and we combine words to form sentences.5 

The second question about the origins of language concerns the origin of particular languages, 
something that grammarians and other linguists have been investigating for decades. French and 
Spanish are phylogenetically closely related, having a common origin in Latin. They are less 
related to Greek languages modern or classic, and still less to Persian or ancient Sanskrit. Darwin 
saw an analogy between the evolution of languages and the evolution of species: 

The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have 
been developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same... We find in distinct languages 
striking homologies due to community of descent and analogies due to a similar process of 
formation... Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can 
be classed... naturally according to descent. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely and 
lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues.6 

In summary, the human capacity for language is an outcome of biological evolution, 
depending on the evolution of certain anatomical and physiological attributes associated with the 
ability to produce precise sounds, but also depending in a most fundamental way on the 



Evolution and Value  52 
 

evolution of the advanced intelligence that is distinctively associated with human nature. The 
origin of particular languages is determined not by biological evolution but by cultural evolution, 
the preferences and experience of human societies, which are different in different human groups 
and which change through times. 

Similarly as in the origin of language, the origin of ethical values refers to two different 
questions. The first question is more fundamental; it asks whether or not human nature is such 
that we are necessarily inclined to have values, including ethical values, by which (the “moral 
sense”) we identify our actions as either right or wrong. Affirmative answers to this first question 
do not necessarily determine what values we may have. Even if we conclude that people cannot 
avoid having values, including moral standards of conduct, it might be that the choice of the 
particular standards used for judgment would be arbitrary. The propensity for having values does 
not necessarily determine what these values should be, similarly as the capacity for language 
does not determine which language we shall speak. 

I propose that humans are value-prone beings by their biological nature. Humans make value 
choices, evaluate their behavior as either right or wrong, moral or immoral, as a consequence of 
their eminent intellectual capacities that include self-awareness and abstract thinking. These 
intellectual capacities are products of the evolutionary process, but they are distinctively human. 

Secondly, I argue that the values we have, including the moral norms according to which we 
evaluate particular actions as either morally good or morally bad (as well as the grounds that may 
be used to justify the values) are products of cultural evolution, not of biological evolution. The 
values preferred, including the norms of morality, belong, in this respect, to the same category of 
phenomena as the languages spoken by different peoples, their political and religious institutions, 
as well as the arts, sciences, and technology. 

The existence of values depends on the existence of human biological nature. Moreover, the 
choice and persistence of values is facilitated whenever they are consistent with biologically 
conditioned human attributes and behaviors. But the values are independent of such attributes 
and behaviors in the sense that some values may not favor, and may hinder, the survival and 
reproduction of the individual and its genes, which survival and reproduction are the targets of 
biological evolution. Discrepancies between accepted values and biological survival are, 
however, necessarily limited in scope or would otherwise lead to the extinction of the individuals 
and populations accepting such discrepant rules. 

The existence of values depends on the ability of humans to anticipate the consequences of 
their own actions. Pulling the trigger, eating vegetables, or taking care of the sick have human 
value only if I can anticipate their consequences. Only if I can anticipate that pulling the trigger 
will shoot the bullet, which in turn will strike and kill my enemy, can the action of pulling the 
trigger be evaluated as nefarious. Pulling a trigger is not in itself a moral action; it becomes so by 
virtue of its relevant consequences. I choose to eat vegetables for reasons of health and I help a 
sick person because this will improve that person’s well-being. 

The ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s actions is closely related to the ability to 
establish the connection between means and ends: that is, of seeing a mean precisely as mean, as 



53  Ayala 
 

 

something that serves a particular end or purpose. This ability to establish the connection 
between means and their ends requires the ability to anticipate the future and to form mental 
images of realities not present or not yet in existence. 

The ability to establish the connection between means and ends happens to be the 
fundamental intellectual capacity that has made possible the development of human culture and 
technology. The evolutionary roots of this capacity may be found in the evolution of the erect 
position, which transformed the anterior limbs of our ancestors from organs of locomotion into 
organs of manipulation. The hands thereby gradually became organs adept for the construction 
and use of objects for hunting and other activities that improved survival and reproduction, i.e., 
that increased the reproductive fitness of their carriers. The construction of tools depends not 
only on manual dexterity, but in perceiving them precisely as tools, as objects that help to 
perform certain actions, that is, as means that serve certain ends or purposes: a knife for cutting, 
an arrow for hunting, an animal skin for protecting the body from the cold. Natural selection 
promoted the intellectual capacity of our biped ancestors, because increased intelligence 
facilitated the perception of tools as tools, and therefore their construction and use, with the 
ensuing amelioration of biological survival and reproduction. 

The development of the intellectual abilities of our ancestors took place over two million 
years or longer, gradually increasing the ability to connect means with ends and, hence, the 
possibility of making ever more complex tools serving remote purposes. The ability to anticipate 
the future, essential for ethical behavior, is therefore closely associated with the development of 
the ability to construct tools, an ability that has produced the advanced technologies of modern 
societies and that is largely responsible for the success of mankind as a biological species. From 
its obscure beginnings in Africa, mankind has spread over the whole earth except the frozen 
wastes of Antarctica, and has become the most numerous species of mammal. Numbers may not 
be an unmixed blessing, but they are a measure of biological success.7 

In addition to being able to anticipate the consequences of our actions, values require the 
capacity to make value judgments, to perceive certain objects or deeds as more desirable than 
others. Only if I can see the death of my enemy as preferable to his survival (or vice versa) can 
the action leading to his demise be thought as valuable. If the alternative consequences of an 
action are neutral with respect to value, the action obviously cannot be characterized as valuable. 
The ability to make value judgments depends on the capacity for abstraction, i.e., on the capacity 
to perceive actions or objects as members of general classes. This makes it possible to compare 
objects or actions with one another and to perceive some as more desirable than others. The 
capacity for abstraction requires an advanced intelligence such as it exists in humans and 
apparently in them alone, and it is, therefore, also an outcome of human evolution. 

There is a third requirement for attributing value to a particular behavior or object; namely, 
the ability to choose between alternative courses of actions. Pulling the trigger can be a value 
action only if I have the option not to pull it. A necessary action beyond our control is not a 
value, even if it may be good for us. The circulation of the blood or the process of food digestion 
are not value actions.  



Evolution and Value  54 
 

Whether there is free will is a question much discussed by philosophers and this is not the 
appropriate place to review the arguments. I only will advance two considerations which are 
common sense evidence of the existence of free will. One is our personal experience, which 
indicates that the possibility to choose between alternatives is genuine rather than only apparent. 
The second consideration is that when we confront a given situation that requires action on our 
part, we are able mentally to explore alternative courses of action, thereby extending the field 
within which we can exercise our free will. In any case, if there were no free will, there would be 
no ethical behavior; morality would only be an illusion. The point that I want to make here is, 
however, that free will is dependent on the existence of a well-developed intelligence, which 
makes it possible to explore alternative courses of action and to choose one or another in view of 
the anticipated consequences. 

In summary, values are attributes of the biological make-up of humans and, hence, they exist 
as consequences of biological evolution.8 

Now I turn to the second question: whence do our values come? Are they determined by our 
human nature, that is, are they necessary consequences of biological evolution? The answer is 
no. Human values are not determined by biological evolution, but by cultural evolution. Values 
differ among human societies and even among human individuals, even within the same human 
population or human social group; and human values change through time, that is, not only in the 
scale of human evolution (hundreds of thousands or millions of years), but in the scale of human 
history (hundreds or thousands of years), and even in the scale of a human life (tens of years). 

Religious beliefs, social and political institutions, family traditions and education, all impact 
the values we hold, and of course we have our own preferences and make our individual choices. 
In particular, it is often the case that the value systems held by many individuals derive from 
their religious convictions. There is no necessary, or logical, connection between religious faith 
and moral principles and other values, although there usually is a motivational or psychological 
connection. Religious beliefs do explain why people accept particular values, because they are 
motivated to do so by their religious convictions. But in following the moral and other dictates of 
one’s religion, an individual is not rationally justifying the moral norms that he or she accepts. It 
may well be that the motivational connection between religious beliefs and ethical norms and 
other values is the decisive one for the religious believer. But this is true in general: most people, 
religious or not, accept a particular set of values for social reasons, without trying to justify it 
rationally by means of a theory from which the moral norms can be logically derived. People 
accept the values that prevail in their societies, because they have learned such norms from 
parents, school, or other authorities.9 

I should add, however, that value systems, like any other cultural activities, cannot long 
survive if they run outright contrary to our biology. Our values must be consistent with 
biological nature, because values can only exist in human individuals and in human societies. 
One might therefore also expect, and it is the case, that accepted values will often promote 
behaviors which increase the biological adaptation of those who behave according to them. But 
this is neither necessary nor indeed always the case. 



55  Ayala 
 

 

Notes 
 

1. Simpson 1969, 137. 

2. As late as 1969, homosexuality was illegal in the United States in every state except 
Illinois. “Today homosexuality has been legalized in almost 120 countries, though laws 
against it remain on the books of another 80, mostly in Africa, the Caribbean, Oceania, 
and the Islamic world. Worse, homosexuality is punishable by death in Mauritania, Saudi 
Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, parts of Nigeria, parts of Somalia, and all of Iran.” See Pinker 
2011, 449–450. 

3. Singer 1981/2011. 

4. Pinker 2008, 34. 

5. See, for example, Cela-Conde and Ayala 2007, particularly chapter 10. 

6. Darwin 1871, I, 60. 

7. See Ayala 2010. 

8. Thomas Nagel in his Mind and Cosmos (2012, 66 and elsewhere) argues that the 
explanation of conscious life, and indeed of biological evolution on the whole, requires 
that “there are natural teleological laws governing the development of organization over 
time […] In spite of the exclusion of teleology from contemporary science, it shouldn’t be 
ruled out a priori” (emphasis added). First, let me make it clear that teleology has not 
been excluded from contemporary science. I will adduce as, I hope, definitive exhibit my 
own extensive writings on the subject; for example Ayala 1968, 1970, 1974, 1998, 1999, 
2008. Teleology and teleological explanations are used by evolutionary biologists in 
order to account for the functional features of organisms, their “design,” in terms of the 
goals or purposes they serve. Physical scientists do not face similar demands. The 
configuration of sodium chloride depends on the structure of sodium and chlorine, but no 
chemist is likely to write that sodium chloride has been designed for certain purposes, 
such as tasting salty. The revolution of the earth around the sun results from the laws of 
gravity, but astrophysicists do not state that this happens in order to produce the seasons. 
An object or behavior can be said to be teleological, or telic, when it gives evidence of 
design or appears to be directed towards certain ends, goals, or purposes. For example, 
the behavior of human beings is often teleological. A person who buys an airplane ticket, 
reads a book, or cultivates the earth is trying to achieve a certain goal: getting to a given 
city, acquiring knowledge, or getting food. Objects and machines made by people also 
are usually teleological: a knife is made for cutting, a clock is made for telling time, a 
thermostat is made to regulate temperature. In a similar fashion, I argue, features of 
organisms have come to be because they serve certain purposes or functions, and in this 



Evolution and Value  56 
 

sense they can be said to be teleological: a bird’s wings are for flying, eyes are for seeing, 
and kidneys are constituted for regulating the composition of the blood. The features of 
organisms that may be said to be teleological are those that can be identified as 
adaptations, whether they are structures like a wing or a hand, processes like the 
regulation of temperature in mammals, or behaviors like the courtship displays of a 
peacock. Adaptations are features of organisms that have come about by natural selection 
because they increase the reproductive success of their carriers. Teleological explanations 
apply only to features or behaviors that would not have come about were it not for the 
particular end or purpose they serve. The end, goal, or purpose served is, therefore, the 
explanatory reason for the existence of the feature or behavior and its distinctive 
characteristics. A teleological hypothesis purports to identify the function or purpose that 
accounts for the evolution of a particular feature. 

Of course, teleology and teleological explanations as used by biologists are very 
different notions from the vague, universal teleology offered by Nagel “as possibilities, 
without positive conviction” (2012, 124). According to him, “If evolutionary biology is a 
physical theory—as it is generally taken to be—then it cannot account for the appearance 
of consciousness and of other phenomena that are not physically reducible” (Nagel 2012, 
14–15). It is apparent in this quote, and indeed throughout the whole chapter on 
“Antireductionism and the Natural Order,” that Nagel fails to distinguish between two 
kinds of reductionism: ontological reductionism and epistemological reductionism. 
Evolutionists, myself included, and most biologists sustain ontological reductionism, but 
not epistemological reductionism—a distinction that I explain in the ensuing two 
paragraphs. 

Organisms are complex self-organizing entities made up of parts: organs, tissues, cells, 
organelles, and ultimately molecules and atoms. Issues about the relationship between 
organisms and their physical components, or between biology and the physical sciences, 
arise in at least two domains. Reduction questions arise, first, in a domain that may be 
called ontological, structural, or constitutive. The issue here is whether or not 
physicochemical entities and processes underlie all living phenomena. Are organisms 
constituted of the same components as those making up inorganic matter? Or, do 
organisms consist of other entities besides molecules and atoms? Ontological 
reductionism claims that organisms are exhaustively composed of nonliving parts; no 
substance or other residue remains after all atoms making up an organism are taken into 
account. Ontological reductionism also implies that the laws of physics and chemistry 
fully apply to all biological processes at the level of atoms and molecules. 

A different reduction question concerns issues that may be called epistemological, 
theoretical, or explanatory. The fundamental issue here is whether or not the theories and 
laws of biology can be derived from the laws and theories of physics and chemistry. 
Epistemological reductionism is concerned with the question of whether biology may be 
ignored as a separate science because it represents simply a special case of physics and 



57  Ayala 
 

 

chemistry. When philosophers of science speak of reductionism, they generally refer to 
epistemological reduction. In biology, the question of epistemological reduction is 
whether or not the laws and theories of biology can be shown to be derived as special 
cases from the laws and theories of the physical sciences, which I contend they are not 
(Ayala 1968 and 1987). Nagel’s mistake is to conclude from the fact that evolutionists 
are (ontological) reductionists that they therefore cannot explain human behavior (and 
much else) with their theories. But this does not follow, since evolutionary theories are 
epistemologically antireductionist. Evolutionists use distinctive theories and laws that 
cannot be reduced to, or explained by, the laws of physics and chemistry. 

 

Works Cited 
 
Ayala, Francisco J. 1968. “Biology as an Autonomous Science.” American Scientist 56: 207–

221. 

_____. 1970. “Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology.” Philosophy of Biology 
37: 1–15. 

_____. 1974. “Philosophical Issues.” In Evolution, by Theodosius Dobzhansky, Francisco J. 
Ayala, G. Ledyard Stebbins, and James W. Valentine, 474–516. San Francisco: Freeman. 

_____. 1987. “Biological Reductionism: The Problems and Some Answers.” In Self-
Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order, edited by F. Eugene Yates, 315–324. New 
York and London: Plenum Press. 

_____. 1998. “Teleological Explanations versus Teleology.” History and Philosophy of the 
Life Sciences 20: 41–50. 

_____. 1999. “Adaptations and Novelty: Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary 
Biology.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 21: 3–33. 

_____. 2008. “Reduction, Emergence, Naturalism, Dualism, Teleology: A Précis.” In Back to 
Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr., 76–87. Grand 
Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 

_____. 2010. “What the Biological Sciences Can and Cannot Contribute to Ethics.” In 
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology, edited by Francisco J. Ayala and 
Robert Arp, 316–336. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 

Cela-Conde, Camilo J., and Francisco J. Ayala. 2007. Human Evolution. Trails from the 
Past. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 



Evolution and Value  58 
 

Darwin, Charles. 1871. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 vols. London: 
John Murray. 

Nagel, Thomas. 2012. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of 
Nature is Almost Certainly False. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Pinker, Steven. 2008. “The Moral Instinct.” The New York Times Magazine, January 13, 34ff. 

_____. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: 
Viking Press. 

Simpson, George Gaylord. 1969. Biology and Man. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. 

Singer, Peter. 1981/2011. The Expanding Circle. Ethics and Sociobiology. Princeton, NJ: 
Princeton University Press.  


