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IsaacLewis comments on Thoughts On The Relationship Between Life and Intelligence - Less Wrong
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Do goals always have to be consciously chosen? When you have simple if-then clauses, such as "if (stimulusOnLips) then StartSuckling()", doesn't that count as goal-fulfilling behavior? Even a sleeping human is pursuing an endless stream of maintenance tasks, in non-conscious pursuance of a goal such as "maintain the body in working order". Does that count?
I can see "goal" being sensibly defined either way, so it may be best not to insist on "must be consciously formulated" for the purposes of this post, then move on.
No, they don't have to be consciously chosen. The classic example of a simple agent is a thermostat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent), which has the goal of keeping the room at a constant temperature. (Or you can say "describing the thermostat as having a goal of keeping the temperature constant is a simpler means of predicting its behaviour than describing its inner workings"). Goals are necessary but not sufficient for intelligence.
Which answers Trevor's initial question.