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Notes -
You have defined sensation as the thing that you have but machines lack. Or at least, that's how you're using it, here. But even granting that you're referring to a meat-based sensory data processor as a necessity, that leads to the question of where the meat-limit is. (Apologies if y've posted your animal consciousness tier list before, and I forgot; I know someone has, but I forget who.)
But I don't feel like progress can be meaningfully made on this topic, because we're approaching from such wildly different foundations. Ex, I don't know of definitions of consciousness that actually mean anything or carve reality at the joints. It's something we feel like we have. Since we can't do the (potentially deadly) experiments to break it down physiologically, we're kinda stuck here. It cmight as well mean "soul" for all that it's used any differently.
This is a really interesting question, in part since I think it's actually a lot of questions. You're definitely correct about the problem of definitions not cleaving reality at the joints! Will you indulge me if I ramble? Let's try cleaving a rattlesnake instead of a definition - surely that's closer to reality!
As it turns out, many people have discovered that a rattlesnake's body will still respond to stimulus even when completely separated from its head. Now, let's say for the sake of argument that the headless body has no consciousness or qualia (this may not be true, we apparently have reasons to believe that in humans memory is stored in cells throughout the body, not just in the brain, so heaven knows if the ganglia of a rattlesnake has any sort of experience!) - we can still see that it has sensation. (I should note that we assume the snake has perception or qualia by analogy to humans. I can't prove that they are, essentially, no more or less conscious than Half-Life NPCs.)
Now let's contrast this with artificial intelligence, which has intelligence but no perception. We can torture a computer terminal all day without causing the LLM it is connected to any distress. It's nonsense to talk about it having physical sensation. On the other hand, (to look at your question about the "meat-limit,") we can take a very simple organism, or one that likely does not have a consciousness, and it will respond instantly if we torture it. Maybe it does not have sensation in the sense of qualia, of having a consciousness, but it seems to have sensation in the sense of having sense organs and some kind of decision-making capability attached to them But, let's be fair: if the headless snake has a form of sensation without consciousness, then surely the LLM has a sense of intelligence without sensation - maybe it doesn't respond if you poke it physically, but it responds if you poke it verbally!
Very fine - I think the implication here is interesting. Headless snakes bite without consciousness, or intelligence, but still seems to have sense perception and the ability to react - perhaps an LLM is like a headless snake inasmuch as it has intelligence, but no sensation and perhaps no consciousness (however you want to define that).
I don't claim to have all the answers on stuff - that's just sort of off the top of my head. Happy to elaborate, or hear push back, or argue about the relative merits of corvids versus marine mammals...
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