OK; I think this discussion hinges on a complex issue, the meaning of reason, insight, and understanding, and how they arise. If I understand you correctly, you don't believe they can arise from relatively simple logical operations, such as those governing the signalling of neurons, however complex the arrangement; and I think they can. Is that a fair summary of the relevant positions?
I agree that it seems unlikely that a system of logic gates, however complex, can be programmed directly to reason and understand in a human-like way; I think such hard-coding lacks the degrees of freedom (flexibility) to manage high-level generic information processing of that kind (it might be theoretically possible, but I doubt it).
However, it seems to me that when a large system of logic gates is itself configured as a generic processing system, e.g. a learning system, such as a neural network, higher levels of abstraction in processing information are possible that are not available at a lower level. In other words, novel informational structures and processes are possible - a phenomenon often called 'emergence'. I see this as analogous to the emergent behaviour of the patterns of activity in Conway's Game of Life, where a static grid of binary cells whose on/off state is trivially determined by those of its neighbors, can give rise to patterns with novel rules of movement and interaction, resulting in complex behaviours (complex enough to
compute,
replicate, or
emulate Game of Life itself), dependent solely on the initial grid state.
The fact that specific deficits in reason and understanding are associated with specific damage to or interference with the patterns of firing of neurons in specific areas of the brain suggests to me that reason, insight, and understanding are terms we apply to complex information processing in the patterns of the firing of neurons. YMMV.
