The author is Rodney Brooks [1] so I assume he's aware that it can be considered a form of computation, and probably would agree that it can be simulated using a computer (just as Newtonian mechanics can). But my guess is that he's asking whether that level of abstraction will turn out to be the most scientifically useful way of understanding how cognition actually works. After all, cognition could also be described as interactions of atoms - but trying to understand it in those terms is unlikely to yield much insight.

But it is certainly true that the article is pretty uninformative and superficial!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Brooks