Putting aside what the hell consciousness actually is, I think a good place to start is to ask what it might be for. To that end, a metaphor might help:

Imagine an individual animal's information processing system as akin to a simple society of the form I am about to describe. In this society, there are only three professions. Either you are a mechanic, an engineer or a researcher.

The mechanics take care of all of the everyday jobs that need doing come what may. The engineers take care of the more difficult tasks. But, those task are still ones that may be completed with existing knowledge and practices - albeit some situationally novel decisions may need to be taken - but only within existing known conceptual constraints.

Finally, the researchers conduct blue sky research working out novel solutions to problems that either do not exist or whose existence is so recent and is sufficiently outside the remit of known concepts that relying on the repetitive skills of the mechanics or the higher order, but nevertheless conceptually constrained, skills of the engineers is not going to be sufficient to solve such problems.

The researchers, then, are for the most part superfluous to the functioning of the society. But, novel situations arise sufficiently frequently that, when they do, the researchers pay for their keep.

In the above metaphor, the researchers are akin to consciousness. Mostly superfluous. But, occasionally indispensable

Cultural transmission occurs. Most of it unconsciously and without permission granted nor asked for. Some of that transmission might be seen crass appropriation. Most may not.

It's all irrelevant since it is unpolicable.

Good and Evil are not dependant on free will; nothing is, by definition.
Good is that which pleases man; evil is that which pleases him not. Good and evil are simply dependent of the discrimination of humans identifying them. — Sculptor

All you have done there is move the goalposts.

But, it's the same goal

Moral discrimination of the kind you are referring to requires choice to be made independent of causes. That is to say, they are required to not be the consequence of predetermined responses. Which, in turn, requires free will. Free will requires non causality.

Causality, in a universe that runs on either classical or quantum lines, is inescapable. Free will is therefore impossible in such a universe since, for that will to be free, it would need to occur independently of causes. In other words, it is impossible in all circumstances of reality as we know it.

If a billiard ball rolls down a hill, do we ascribe "free will" to that billiard ball to decide to roll down the hill?

We are made of billiard balls. The fact that they are incredibly tiny and we are made of a very large amount of them and they interact with each other in unfathomably complex ways does not change the fact of what they are or change the implications for us in terms of the possibility of ascribing free will to us any more than we can ascribe it to that billiard ball rolling down that hill.

So, in short, I am not suggesting one cannot believe in free will. But, in order to do so, one must reject the laws of physics as currently understood.

Perhaps, another way to express that which I have already outlined in my previous posts is in relation to causality.

To accept the premise that good and evil exists, we must accept that free will exists and in order to accept that free will exists we must assume it operates outside of the constraints of causality.

In our material universe, we understand that all physical states arise as a consequence of previous physical states. That is to say, they are caused by those previous states. Thus, all physical states are determined by previous physical states.

Therefore, there can be no such thing as free will so long as human cognition is a physical manifestation of brain functioning inside a physical universe.

Or perhaps the material universe is the illusion and the free will we experience is actually the deeper truth. Your approach ignores metaphysics and directly jumps to physicalism. — Echarmion

I don't ignore metaphysics. I deny it.

And yet, we are compelled, by virtue of our genetic inheritance, to believe and to act as if it does exist.

Regarding my immediately previous post about the necessity of answering the question of whether free will can exist before being able to answer the question of whether evil can exist:

In a universe run along classical principles, it's all just billiard balls. If one had a God's eye view and knew the position, velocity and direction of travel of all of the billiard balls at any arbitrary point in the universe's past, one would be able to predict, precisely, the position, velocity and direction of travel of all of the billiard balls at any arbitrary point in its future. Such a universe is both deterministic and predictable, at least in principle.

All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.

In a universe run along quantum principles, it's still billiard balls. But, their existence now becomes probabilistic as opposed to absolute. In other words, at any arbitrary point in time, a billiard ball can wink into existence or wink out of existence. So, unlike a classical universe, although still fully deterministic, prediction become impossible in principle as well as in practice in such a universe. Even for God.

All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.

Since we are a part of this material universe, we too are made of billiard balls. Therefore, the only way for Free Will to exist is for it to exist outside the time and space constraints of a material universe.

And if free will cannot exist, then neither can good nor evil.

In a universe run along classical principles, it's all just billiard balls. If one had a God's eye view and knew the position, velocity and direction of travel of all of the billiard balls at any arbitrary point in the universe's past, one would be able to predict, precisely, the position, velocity and direction of travel of all of the billiard balls at any arbitrary point in its future. Such a universe is both deterministic and predictable, at least in principle.

All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.

In a universe run along quantum principles, it's still billiard balls. But, their existence now becomes probabilistic as opposed to absolute. In other words, at any arbitrary point in time, a billiard ball can wink into existence or wink out of existence. So, unlike a classical universe, although still fully deterministic, prediction become impossible in principle as well as in practice in such a universe. Even for God.

All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.

Since we are a part of this material universe, we too are made of billiard balls. Therefore, the only way for Free Will to exist is for it to exist outside the time and space constraints of a material universe.

But, then, I would say that, wouldn't I.

Evil, in addition to Good, requires the existence Free Will.

So, the the more fundamental quesiton that requires answering before the question of the existence of Evil existing can be answered is does Free will exist. If it does, then both Evil and Good can exist. If it does not, then neither Evil nor good can exist.

I’ve been thinking about how I might myself deal with this objection. Of course, it applies not just to biologically infertile humans, but to all organisms that do not self-replicate. Worker ants, and for that matter any organism that simply fails in the evolutionary game. Could we say that a mayfly that died without ever managing to breed was never alive? There seems to be something wrong with this.

So to offer a slightly more refined version of my definition, I’d say that once you start with a complex thing that self replicates, evolution is ignited. Once that happens, you generate a tree structure that continues to exists because at least some nodes do self replicate.

Once you have that, each node on that tree – each individual organism – qualifies as alive. Regardless of whether it, as an individual node, self replicates or not.

Indeed, we may even recognize that the very fact that many nodes do not self replicate is itself a vital aspect of the evolutionary process that creates and maintains life. — Theologian

I like that. I like it a lot. Put far better than me.

well, it appears as though infertile humans wouldn’t qualify as life by the 4 requirements you have listed — TheHedoMinimalist

Fair point.
Okay, I should qualify my argument by stating that the above entity is an abstraction of all of the entities of a given population of such entities and, as such, need only probabilistically posses all of the said characteristics

post deleted

If we strip away any regard to the substrates involved and/or what those substrate may imply in terms of the mechanics of the living process we are left with what are, arguably, the simplest facts of what constitutes life as we know it:

1) An entity must exist that is capable of replication and the resources necessary for such replication should be available.

2) The replication process should not, in all circumstances, produce perfect copies and should, instead, allow for a tiny amount of random variation

3) the above variations should be subject to a process of natural section based upon environmental constraints

4) there must a be a lot of time available for the above processes to evolve from simple to complex.

At some point, relativity early on in the above process, we may say that "life" exists.

....You didn't exist yet, so you couldn't ask. Or refuse, either. That's life. Get used to it.... — Bitter Crank

This argument could be equally used by someone who raised slaves from birth here on earth. Would that also just "be life" and something that they should just "get used to"?

There are objective conditions of reality.

Facts are falsifiable human descriptions of those objective conditions. To that extent, they are objective descriptions of those objective conditions. Or, as objective as it is possible to be without being those objective conditions.

If humans cease to exist, such falsifiable descriptions of the objective conditions of reality also cease to exist.

However, the objective conditions of reality themselves do not cease to exist if humans and their descriptions of them cease to exist.

I just wrote you a full response, and it has since been deleted.

Nuclear Fission is not powerful enough, nuclear fusion is always 50 years away and, besides, each of these have limitations due to the fuel needing to be carried aboard.

Then there is the issue of speed and distances involved. To be able to travel such vast distances in ny kind of plausible way (I will expand in what I consider as "plausible" later), the speed would need to be a significant fraction of the speed of light. Putting aside the technical difficulties in achieving such speed given the above limited energy sources and consequent technologies, there is a deeper, more intractable problem and that is the fact that "empty" space, particularly for large bodies of matter travelling at high speeds, is not empty.

In each cubic metre of space, there are, on average a few free floating, lone hydrogen atoms as well as other elements and larger, more complex, cosmic dust particles. For anything travelling at a tiny fraction of the speed of light, these particles may as well be assumed to be non existent in practical terms. But, for objects travelling at significant fractions of the speed of light they are anything but non existent. If we assume a large space craft travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light, the issue of friction and build up of heat is going to be a problem.

The only other viable system that has been conceptualized would be the Buzzard Ram jet whereby free hydrogen is harvested on route from the interstellar medium I alluded to above. This is still firmly in the realms of science fiction and there is no good reason to assume it will not remain there.

To return, now, to the issue of what is a plausible time-span for travel to another world. If we are talking about a multi-generational time-span, the following issue arises: the spaceship would need a fully functioning, ecologically self contained and self sustaining living system whereby all waste products of life were recycled and returned to the system for reuse. Here, on earth, we have an entire planetary eco system devoted to that little task. In what realms of fantasy does anyone suppose it would be possible to create a fantastically miniaturized, version of the above - where all of the energy required for such a complex living system to exist and to renew and repair itself would have to be carried on board for the entire journey?

There are other issues of plausibility, but I'll leave it at that one since it is quite insurmountable enough as it is. Put it this way, if humans were capable of devising a space vessel capable of the above, there would be little requirement to endure the arduous interstellar journey to the next star since humans could colonize empty space in our own solar system far more easily on the back of such technologies. But, even that is highly improbable.

Our future is not in the stars. It is in the mud.

The question is moot. We are not going anywhere.