The other thing to say is that there's an important sense in which most modern creatures don't value anything - except for their genetic heritage - which all living things necessarily value.

Contrast with a gold-atom maximiser. That values collections of pure gold atoms. It cares about something besides the survival of its genes (which obviously it also cares about - no genes, no gold). It strives to leave something of value behind.

Most modern organisms don't leave anything behind - except for things that are inherited - genes and memes. Nothing that they expect to last for long, anyway. They keep dissipating energy gradients until everything is obliterated in high-entropy soup.

Those values are not very difficult to preserve - they are the default state.

If ecosystems cared about creating some sort of low-entropy state somewhere, then that property would take some effort to preserve (since it is vulnerable to invasion by creatures who use that low-entropy state as fuel). However, with the current situation, there aren't really any values to preserve - except for those of the replicators concerned.

The idea has been called variously: goal system zero, god's utility function, Shiva's values.

Even the individual replicators aren't really valued in themselves - except by themselves. There's a parliament of genes, and any gene is expendable, on a majority vote. Genes are only potentially immortal. Over time, the representation of the original genes drops. Modern refactoring techniques will mean it will drop faster. There is not really a floor to the process - eventually, all may go.