Perry Hendricks says:
"Why think that all actual states of affairs are (to some degree) valuable? Actual states of affairs are valuable because being actual is good—there is value in being actual." (Skeptical Theism, pg 30)
And just before:
"Of course, this doesn't mean that all actual states of affairs are good all-things-considered . . ." (29)
Continuing:
"To sloganize this argument: it's (at least somewhat) good to be." (30)
Okay.
No.
No, no, no.
First of all, it's certainly the case that non-conscious states of affairs are not intrinsically valuable if intrinsic value must be something the goodness of which is directly accessible. Second, I have no idea how anything could be valuable in and of itself, for its own sake, unless that value is immediately apparent, i.e. directly accessible. (What else could value ultimately be if it's not something experienced or apprehended?) The question of why pursue happiness is silly, because happiness is worth pursuing for its own sake. Yet asking why pursue (blank) for anything else at all is not silly, because anything else is not worth it for its own sake. Whenever someone says, "Surely, (blank) is worth pursuing for its own sake," what they really mean is that the unique kind of happiness derived from (blank) is worth pursuing for its own sake. It's too easy for us to confuse the happiness with the thing that produced the happiness, because they often are so closely connected.
Some folks will say knowledge or truth is good in itself, or good for its own sake, or intrinsically good. Nope. There's an enormous amount of knowledge out there of what various surgeries and medical procedures and conditions look like. Thank goodness we are spared of that knowledge (unless you happen to be in med school, or work in healthcare, and even then, you are happily missing out on almost all the gross things that happen in the world). There's even more knowledge that is simply boring, useless, or irrelevant. I've been to libraries, with the dustiest, tome-like books with no labels. I've randomly picked them up and started reading. One was some hundred year-old book on medical procedures. (Gross and dry and technical – a two in one!) It's fun to go around and open up random books and see what's there. But most of the time, they're just really boring.
(Okay real talk for a second though medical and surgical knowledge is awesome, it saves lives. Anyway, carry on.)
Plus, the more knowledge you absorb, the more bogged down your brain gets. So, not only is knowledge not necessarily intrinsically or extrinsically good, it can even be extrinsically bad, like when the knowledge is saddening or traumatizing (or gross, as mentioned).
It's not necessarily somewhat good to be. Pure being is neutral, and the goodness and badness of it depends on circumstances. Why prefer existence to non-existence? Never because existence is good in itself, but because of the good experiences that come with existing.
1) Value is realized consciously.
2) If value is realized consciously, then an eternal unconscious existence is neutral.
3) Therefore, an eternal unconscious existence is neutral.
4) If being has intrinsic value, then an eternal unconscious existence is not neutral, but positive.
5) Therefore, it is not the case that being has intrinsic value. (modus tollens)
You might say that unconscious being is extrinsically good when there is a chance for you to become conscious later, and it's this extrinsic goodness we are recognizing when we recognize the goodness of unconscious existence. Absolutely, I admit that this kind of existence has extrinsic value, provided that it really will lead to intrinsic value. In the case of eternal unconscious existence, there is no chance of value being realized (with respect to that unconscious person), and so there is no extrinsic goodness in that existence.
Even if you set it up probabilistically, it might be tempting to think that if I have an 80% chance of waking up and having a good experience, then this probabilistic good is still an extrinsic good. But it's only retroactively extrinsically good if you in fact win. If you in fact lose, then the probabilistic event failed to give rise to intrinsic goodness. If something fails to give rise to intrinsic goodness, then it fails to be extrinsically good.
So no, it is not magically, inexplicably good to exist. Whether it's good for you to exist depends on the good experiences you can have or can cause others. Obviously, it would be silly to think there is any value in a nightmare world just because it exists. I'm not mistakenly talking about all-things-considered value when I should be talking about the minimal necessary intrinsic or extrinsic value of being. I mean there is no necessary value in being; how could there be? When I imagine a world without conscious agents to experience it, I cannot see how that world could have any value at all (except extrinsic value if and only if the world gives rise to agents who ground value in experience).
Another argument for the necessary value of being:
". . . being actual is one way to resemble a maximally great being, and so being actual has (at least some) value." (30-31)
No.
First, being actual is one way to resemble a maximally evil being, as an evil being that's real is far worse than an evil being that isn't.
Second, there's no reason to think that resembling a maximally great being in any respect automatically makes one greater. If actuality is paired with evil, then as the evil gets worse, so does the actuality. If being powerful is paired with evil, then as the evil gets worse, so does the power. Actuality is not a great-making property by itself; it must be combined with goodness.
Third, there's no reason to think that existence or actuality is a great-making property. Instead, it's necessary existence that is taken to be a great-making property. Contingent existence is not great-making, and in fact being contingent would disqualify one from being a maximally great being. So being actual is not a way to resemble a maximally great being – being necessarily actual is. And almost all states of affairs are not necessarily actual (i.e. almost all states of affairs depend upon prior states for their existence; we may include, or not, depending on our theory of modality, that almost all states of affairs could fail to exist), and therefore almost all states of affairs do not resemble a maximally great being.
Fourth, being necessarily actual might not be a great-making property either. Being evil and existing necessarily is so much worse than being evil and existing contingently. So again, necessary existence might only be a great-making property when it's combined with perfect goodness. Plus, a necessary being might in the end be incoherent, and its necessity combined with other aspects could be causing the incoherence. Necessary existence cannot be a great-making property when it's an impossible-making property. I'm not saying necessary existence is an impossible-making property. I'm saying that for all I know, it could be, and if it is, then necessary existence is not a great-making property.
"Reality is biased toward the good." – I'm not sure there are many theses in philosophy more implausible than this, more disproven by our everyday experience. Maybe this comes down to temperament and how well your life has gone. But even if your life has been stellar, it doesn't take a great deal of observation to see how entropic our universe is, how tragic it is, and just how much suffering and death there is, has been, and will be.
Reality is fundamentally neutral, biased neither toward the good nor bad. The vast majority of objects in our universe are not conscious at all – no happiness, no pain. We live in a dumb, boring universe that will rip itself apart until chemistry and consciousness (as we know it) becomes impossible, with a patch of happiness here and a blotch of misery there – really, as far as we can tell, concentrated entirely on a single planet, entirely within a brief sliver of time – a universe that will die a heat death, with all life, in all likelihood, having been long, long gone by the time it does.