First, it seems you've shifted from "intelligent" to "conscious". "These math operations produce consciousness" is different from "these operations produce intelligence".

Second, "it's just math" doesn't mean literally "it's a branch of algebra". It means "it's a computable function". So it can be relevant to the discussion only if you think that intelligence is somehow non-computable, and therefore that there are non-computable processes going on in our brain. Otherwise it's a perfectly pointless remark.