guy recently linked this essay, its old, but i don't think its significantly wrong (despite gpt evangelists) also read weizenbaum, libs, for the other side of the coin
I just think of brains like they're anything else, a lot of arrangements of molecules, but animated by other molecules which are arranged in ways that self-replicate (RNA essentially). As a physical organ its structure changes as a result of feedback from continued survival and the environment. Just really complicated patterns of matter and energy that have emerged from the conditions on Earth.