You raise the best objection - indeed, we have no idea how consciousness/qualia could arise from physical processes, nor can we even non-circularly define what consciousness is [1]. But assuming it arises purely through physical processes of the human brain, there is no reason to think it could not be reproduced on a different substrate.

In other words, computing that feeling is equally mysterious whether it is done by neurons, or by transistors.

[1] There are attempts, like vague implications it has something to do with information processing - but that is not actually defining what it is, just what it is associated with and how it might arise. There are other problems with these attempts, such as the fact that the weather can be thought of as an "information processing" system, reacting to changes in pressure and humidity and temperature... so is it conscious? But that is tangential.

Hard problems like that can take a long time to solve, multiple phds and/or breakthroughs. Maybe a good longbet[1].

[1] https://longbets.org/

One can argue that the described feeling is a product of suppressed instinctive behavior. Or, in other words, a detail of a particular implementation of intelligence in a certain species of mammals.