Jellyfish move about quite well without brains. Some can avoid obstacles. Even single celled organisms do just fine moving purposefully without brains.
Yes, there are brainless organic entities that move. They aren't quite as good as we are at avoiding danger or finding food and shelter. We require a lot of food--fuel that creates energy--to run our brains. We are far more complex beings. That is how evolution works. The brainless moving beings form part of the food chain that sustains the more complex ones.
Plants to need to be able to respond to changes in their environment such as predation. Many can communicate to one another and even other species (wasps/ants) to warn them or seek help.
That is anthropomorphic projection on your part. Many machines rely on communication of sorts to run. Various parts of the machine "communicate" information to other parts. That doesn't make the machines sentient. For sentience, you need a rather complex brain, although I must acknowledge that some Artificial Intelligence research is trying to create sentience in machines. There are reasons why you might want a robot to be aware of its environment and its own condition or "health". When you work with robots, you realize why motile beings with brains developed self-awareness. Plants do not need self-awareness to survive and prosper. They just have to produce enough copies of themselves to keep from dying out. If they did die out, then all beings that depended on them for food would also die out.
This is a highly developed ability to send and understand information.
But not highly developed in a human sense. There is no reason why plants ought to have developed anything like human emotions or self-awareness. What you are doing is known as the
Clever Hans Phenomenon. You are imputing human behavior and cognition to organisms and objects that don't have the requisite equipment.
All energy "moves". All energy is vibrational and changes form. What guides it? Is it possible that that energy which could be considered "consciousness" is more than just the ability to "think" and "feel", and "predict"? Or perhaps it is simpler than that. Perhaps consciousness is merely the ability to "move" and change form. Is it possible that that vibrational force which holds all energy together and causes it to move is a form of "consciousness"?
We can call energy "consciousness" if we like, but what exactly does that mean? Is it self-awareness or consciousness in the sense that you and I experience it? An awareness of one's self and surroundings? I don't see what it really gains you to say something like that. Perhaps it gives you hope that you will survive in some form after your body dies. I would love to think that I would survive death, but my knowledge and reasoning has forced the reluctant conclusion on me that I will not.
What we think about are experiences that we have in our bodies--sights, smells, touches, tastes, etc. These are experiences associated with very specific physical equipment in our bodies. We also know that our subjective experiences can be affected by physical influences on our brains--that the seat of OUR consciousness has a physical location and is grounded in a physical structure. A conk on the head can shut off your self-awareness and consciousness. It may or may not do so permanently. This is unfortunate, but it is the human condition.
