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JamesAndrix comments on Bloggingheads: Robert Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky - Less Wrong
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Evolution is an optimization process, but it doesn't have "purpose" - it simply has byproducts that appear purposeful to humans.
Really, most of your comment just helps illustrate my point that purposefulness is a label attached by the observer: your knowledge (or lack thereof) of Martians is not something that changes the nature of the rock pattern itself, not even if you observe the Martian placing the rocks.
(In fact, your intiial estimate of whether the Martian's behavior is purposeful is going to depend largely on a bunch of hardwired sensory heuristics. If the Martian moves a lot slower than typical Earth wildlife, for example, you're less likely to notice it as a candidate for purposeful behavior in the first place.)
How do you know it doesn't have purpose? Because you know how it works, and you know that nothing like "Make intelligent life." was contained in it's initial state in the way it could be contained in a Martian brain or an AI.
The dumb mating martian also did not leave the rocks with any (intuitively labeled) purpose.
I'm saying: Given a high knowledge of the actual process behind something, we can take a measure that can useful, and corresponds well to what we label intentionality.
In turn, if we have only the aftermath of a process as evidence, we may be able to identify features which correspond to a certain degree of intentionality, and that might help us infer specifics of the process.