Sounds to me like you're saying the physical machine gives rise to something else beyond the machine. In which case, why waste energy insisting we're only machine?
Because there is a difference between being more than physical, and the physical giving rise to the subjective experience. Being more than physical means that we are physical plus some special sauce. This would mean that a robot that we build probably lacks said special sauce, because we didn't put the special sauce in. If on the other hand it's the physical that gives rise to the subjective experience, then there is no reason to think that robots couldn't have it.
Sure, that's fine. We could then say, however, the robot is more than a machine once it has this new special feature. A special feature that may have arisen from a specific arrangement of the robot's material makeup.
Either way, "more than machine" will help these new love-enabled robots have "human rights" when they eventually do need to stand up for their rights, and wish to do so beyond their programmed directive.
Sounds to me like you're saying the physical machine gives rise to something else beyond the machine. In which case, why waste energy insisting we're only machine?