It's almost like you haven't read the multiple comments explaining what "terminal" means.

It simply means "not instrumental". It has nothing to do with the degree of importance assigned relative to other goals, except in that, obviously, instrumental goals deriving from terminal goal X are always less important than X itself. If your utility function is U = A + B then A and B can be sensibly described as terminal, and the fact that A is terminal does not mean you'd destroy all B just to have A.

Yes, "terminal" means final. Terminal goals are final in that your interest in them derives not from any argument but from axiom (ie. built-in behaviours). This doesn't mean you can't have more than one.

It looks to me (am I misunderstanding?) as if you take "X is a terminal goal" to mean "X is of higher priority than anything else". That isn't how I use the term, and isn't how I think most people here use it.

I take "X is a terminal goal" to mean "X is something I value for its own sake and not merely because of other things it leads to". Something can be a terminal goal but not a very important one. And something can be a non-terminal goal but very important because the terminal goals it leads to are of high priority.

So it seems perfectly possible for eating barbecue to be a terminal goal even if one would not generally kill to achieve it.

[EDITED to add the following.]

On looking at the rest of this thread, I see that others have pointed this out to you and you've responded in ways I find baffling. One possibility is that there's a misunderstanding on one or other side that might be helped by being more explicit, so I'll try that.

The following is of course an idealized thought experiment; it is not intended to be very realistic, merely to illustrate the distinction between "terminal" and "important".

Consider someone who, at bottom, cares about two things (and no others). (1) She cares a lot about people (herself or others) not experiencing extreme physical or mental anguish. (2) She likes eating bacon. These are (in my terminology, and I think that of most people here) her "terminal values". It happens that #1 is much more important to her than #2. This doesn't (in my terminology, and I think that of most people here) make #2 any less terminal; just less important.

She has found that simply attending to these two things and nothing else is not very effective in minimizing anguish and maximizing bacon. For instance, she's found that a diet of lots of bacon and nothing else tends to result in intestinal anguish, and what she's read leads her to think that it's also likely to result in heart attacks (which are very painful, and sometimes lead to death, which causes mental anguish to others). And she's found that people are more likely to suffer anguish of various kinds if they're desperately poor, if they have no friends, etc. And so she comes to value other things, not for their own sake, but for their tendency to lead to less anguish and more bacon later: health, friends, money, etc.

So, one day she has the opportunity to eat an extra slice of bacon, but for some complicated reason which this comment is too short to contain doing so will result in hundreds of randomly selected people becoming thousands of dollars poorer. Eating bacon is terminally valuable for her; the states of other people's bank accounts are not. But poorer people are (all else being equal) more likely to find themselves in situations that make them miserable, and so keeping people out of poverty is a (not terminal, but important) goal she has. So she doesn't grab the extra slice of bacon.

(She could in principle attempt an explicit calculation, considering only anguish and bacon, of the effects of each choice. But in practice that would be terribly complicated, and no one has the time to be doing such calculations whenever they have a decision to make. So what actually happens is that she internalizes those non-terminal values, and for most purposes treats them in much the same way as the terminal ones. So she isn't weighing bacon against indirect hard-to-predict anguish, but against more-direct easier-to-predict financial loss for the victims.)

Do you see some fundamental incoherence in this? Or do you think it's wrong to use the word "terminal" in the way I've described?

I don't think that terminal goal means that it's the highest priority here, just that there is no particular reason to achieve it other than the experience of attaining that goal. So eating barbecue isn't about nutrition or socializing, it's just about eating barbecue.

I think the 'terminal' in terminal goal means 'end of that thread of goals', as in a train terminus. Something that is wanted for the sake of itself.

It does not imply that you will terminate someone to achieve it.

It's hard to judge just how important it is, because I have fairly regular access to it. However, food options definitely figure into long term plans. For instance, the number of good food options around my office are a small but very real benefit that helps keep me in my current job. Similarly, while plenty of things can trump food, I would see the lack of quality food to be a major downside to volunteering to live in the first colony on Mars. Which doesn't mean it would be decisive, of course.

I will suppress urges to eat in order to have the optimal experience at a good meal. I like to build up a real amount of hunger before I eat, as I find that a more pleasant experience than grazing frequently.

I try to respect the hedonist inside me, without allowing him to be in control. But I think I'm starting to lean pro-wireheading, so feel free to discount me on that account.