How do you know the sensation of a red photon hitting a cone cell, transduced to the optic nerve through ion junctions and processed by pyramidal neurons, is any more or less real than the excitation of electrons in a doped silicon junction activating the latent space of the "red" thought vector? Cause we are made of meat?

Sensory input is nothing but data.

Neural networks can have senses. Hook an LLM up to a thermometer and it will respond to temperature changes.