just before this, Pink grants that sharks "may hold beliefs and desires, and may perform goal-directed actions as we do," but then asks, "yet is a shark in control of its action as we are?" then follows it up with the aforepictured excerpt, claiming that sharks "don't reason as humans do," therefore they are not in control of their actions, therefore sharks, and other non-human animals, are not "free agents." but i think he's using "reason" instead of "intelligence" here, on purpose.

and he’s doing that because he doesn’t want to grapple with the big problems that the concept of "intelligence" brings into the free will debate. for example, a shark will hunt for food, but it will not hunt a mature whale for food; however, sharks will hunt young, sick, or injured whales, which illustrates a level of (his word) “reasoning” behind their actions. maybe he would argue this is biological instinct?

but the way i see it is, the difference between a shark and human, outside of anatomy and all that, is that sharks just aren’t very smart. unfortunately for Mr. Pink, however, i know a lot of people who aren’t very smart. are those people not “free agents?”

my problem is that Pink here is basically saying, “sharks aren’t very smart, therefore they have no free will,” but every living thing has intelligence, albeit to varying degrees, so intelligence is on a scale, and if on a scale, then every living thing must have some capacity to be a “free agent,” even if it looks more like instinct to an observer. it’s arrogant to assume that, because humans are the most intelligent on Earth, that this disqualifies non-human animals from being free agents.

just imagine, for a moment, a super “intelligent” alien species from another planet, would they think that humans are “free agents,” considering their alien intelligence is so vastly superior to our own? they may look at us like, “these guys are still killing each other for oil in the desert, they are no different than bears fighting over the biggest cave,” or something like that.