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Evil beings in Middle earth areaware of what they’re doing, & its that very awareness, that deliberate infliction of suffering on others in full consciousness, that makes it necessary for our ‘heroes’ to stand against them
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True. And yet afterwards Tolkien painstakingly tried to reconcile things - to make orks automata, souless animals. And another yet, I suppose that consciousness in the case is not an indicator - Robot (minus 3 laws) may be conscious, yet may be capable of cruelty without remorse. What I'm driving at is, that, in fact, agreeing with what davem points at, I propose to state that there is more to orkish intelligence - they are model also of what mere Intelligence, driven by fear and not backed up by will+obedience (obedience=love here) may end up in.
With a proviso -
some orks are not only intelligent, but have free will as well. I suppose that almost all
named orks in the story fall under latter category - i.e. Grishnakh, Gorbag, Shagrat, Ugluk (the latter more so, as, allegedly, he's a 'man-ork' (or ork-man)).
And such a proviso brings a loadful of difficulties about. But about difficulties, later.