the real question

It seems to me that the primary question is not whether one could engineer a percipient being, but what perception really is.  It is more than a physics-bound process, even if it's physical.  It's more than a physics-bound process even if one could engineer it into existence from inorganic material.  I don't think the latter is possible at all, but it would be helpful to grant its possibility so as to be able to make the point that even in such a case, reductionism would not be confirmed.  Rather, something more than physics-bound processes would be going on where none had been going on before.