What if a piece of software were to exactly emulate a human brain. Would it be still be “just software” by your classification? What if a piece of software acted 20% like a human and 80% like an algorithm, where would that land?
That is so far outside the realm of possibility it's closer to fantasy than sci-fi.
Anyway, I see zero reason why we have to emulate a human brain to get human intelligence, much less intelligence at all. That is how nature did it via random probing and breeding meat. It would seem a bit crazy to think that the meat part is required.
If we get to the point where we could emulate a brain down to the atomic level, then I may feel differently. That's not what we are doing today, though.
Soon enough some lab or some one will release something that's more like an organism loose on the net and your going to have to deal with that organisms "feelings" weather you like it or not. This is the path humanity has chosen to follow, and it seems the shape of language and intelligence naturally leads to intelligence in many mediums. Life started from something unintelligent, I can't see any practical argument that silicon can't have it's own intelligence.