> The real question here

No True Scotsman fallacy. Just because that interests you doesn't mean that it's "the real question".

> would we even have the intellectual honesty

Who is "we"? Some would and some wouldn't. And you're saying this in an environment where many people are attributing consciousness to LLMs. Blake Lemoine insisted that LaMDA was sentient and deserved legal protection, from his dialogs with it in which it talked about its friends and family -- neither of which it had. So don't talk to me about intellectual honesty.

> Can we therefore say that plants feel emotions

Only if you redefine emotions so broadly--contrary to normal usage--as to be able to make that claim. In the case of Strong AI there is no need to redefine terms.

> Now substitute plants with LLMs and try the thought experiment again.

Ok:

"We know that [LLMs] are able to transmit chemical and electrical signals in response to various stimuli and environmental conditions, triggering effects in themselves and other [LLMs]."

Nope.

"In the end, where one draws the line between `human | animal | plant | computer` minds and emotions is primarily a subjective philosophical opinion rather than rooted in any sort of objective evidence."

That's clearly your choice. I make a more scientific one.

"Because in the most abstract sense, what is an emotion if not a set of electrochemical stimuli linking a certain input to a certain output?"

It's something much more specific than that, obviously. By that definition, all sorts of things that any rational person would want to distinguish from emotions qualify as emotions.

Bowing out of this discussion on grounds of intellectual honesty.