GP can reason about what he's doing. He knows that he's commenting on HN. He can come up with a plausible reason why (recreation, perhaps). In a more interesting scenario, say building a dam, GP would cut down logs with the express intention of building a dam to make a pond.
The beaver doesn't know what it's doing, literally. It can't tell you why, it doesn't have a greater plan of building a dam, etc.
You're really talking about motivation, and I'll agree that the motivation is roughly the same for GP and the beaver--some mix of chemicals in their respective brains influencing behavior.
GP can reason about what he's doing. He knows that he's commenting on HN. He can come up with a plausible reason why (recreation, perhaps). In a more interesting scenario, say building a dam, GP would cut down logs with the express intention of building a dam to make a pond.
The beaver doesn't know what it's doing, literally. It can't tell you why, it doesn't have a greater plan of building a dam, etc.
You're really talking about motivation, and I'll agree that the motivation is roughly the same for GP and the beaver--some mix of chemicals in their respective brains influencing behavior.