Emotions aren't necessarily algorithms in the sense that it's a structured process. It's an instinctual process. Structure is the difference maker in my opinion because once you begin to structure information, you can do stuff like sort, rank, create order, rank preferences, use deduction, etc.

I was thinking along the lines of what happens at the brain level. A neural net of the type our brain is and, say, a Von Neumann architecture the typical computer today represents, are computationally equivalent, i.e. are able to compute the same things.