> a goal, which is contingent on it's continued existence. Yet, this doesn't make its existence into an instrumental goal. It literally does, this is by the de

> a goal, which is contingent on it's continued existence. Yet, this doesn't make its existence into an instrumental goal. It literally does, this is by the definition of an "instrumental goal". The key word here being "contingent". > It could as well sacrifice itself (by I don't know, consuming all the memory and killing the process) in an attempt to accomplish said goal. True only for when self-sacrifice is orthogonal to accomplishing the terminal goal. Your confusion might lie in that a prolog theorem solver is not a good example of a goal-driven agent.