https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBl0I7kTXo8
"Dennett of course doesn't mean that one can be the author of their thoughts or desires in the maximalist sense, but so what?"
So what is that your actions don't say anything about you in that case, only about what you have. You can describe someone in terms of their non-essential properties, whether they are virtuous or vicious in this or that way. That's obviously important as it lets you know what to expect of their behavior, whether to stay away from them or whether they are safe (or whether they would make for a good interlocutor in a conversation or just resort to name-calling).
But descriptions of non-essential properties are not descriptions of essential properties... obviously. If my essential property is my subjectivity, then everything else about me is non-essential, something I have but not am. (And this is why trying to solve free will without first solving personal identity will never work, I think. How can I make sense of what it means for me to be blamed if I don't know what 'me' is?)
"If I'm not the source of my actions because I didn't self-generate my own nature ex nihilo, then the hose isn't a source of water . . . I think to say that it's false that the hose is a true source of water has some pretty absurd implications if you follow it through . . ."
I'm happy to say that the hose is a source of water, because it's not a source in any sense that gives me reason to be dissuaded from my free will skepticism.
In tort & criminal law you have the "but-for" test to determine factual causation. Ex. But for the fact that I acted (or failed to act) as I did, the injury would not have happened. So my action (or failure to act) is the factual cause of injury. (That's not enough to determine legal responsibility, as my conduct has to be a proximate cause, or I have to have a duty to act, etc. But I digress.)
So the hose is a source of water in the sense that it "passes" the but-for test; but for the hose, I would not have access to water (or, I would have one fewer access points to water).
Likewise, our conduct can pass the but-for test. But that doesn't mean we're free; it doesn't mean that my actions say anything about me even if my actions say something about what I have. And what I have is perfectly morally relevant when it comes to blame, praise, responsibility, punishment, and so on. Like Robert Sapolsky says, if a car has no brakes, you don't let it out onto the roads and risk hurting someone. Likewise, it makes perfect sense to lock up people for the safety of others (and, hopefully, for improving the quality of the incarcerated person so that they can re-integrate into society. But we know that the US prison system couldn't care less about that part). We "praise" (recognize the quality of) cars that function well and "blame" (recognize the poor quality of) them when they don't. We can explain our recourse to praise and blame this way, as a recognition of quality rather than as an accusation of ultimate sourcehood. Indeed, it is by someone's proximate sourcehood that we come to recognize the quality of their kindness, moral reasoning, emotional stability, etc.—qualities they inherited from circumstances.
I'm convinced (any reason why I shouldn't be?) that free will skepticism can make perfect sense of common sense notions of responsibility, blame, praise, punishment, everything, whether in law or moral dilemmas. (Obviously, with the exception of retributive punishment specifically. That doesn't make any sense.)
What explains these dispositions? Where do they come from? Do we choose our dispositions, or are they products of factors beyond our control? It seems to me that compatibilism always kicks the can down the road. Whichever criterion of freedom they cite as the Real Freedom, whether that be acting on desire, or acting on your second-order desires, or acting on self-endorsed values, or acting according to your own sensitivity to reasons, or acting on your own dispositions—for any freedom criterion N, the further question can be asked of what caused N, and we can imagine Pereboom-style scenarios where someone has N and yet intuitively does not have free will, because N was caused by circumstances beyond their control, and the most core intuition we have (certainly, that I have) when it comes to free will is that it's not fair to blame someone for something beyond their control. Put another way, it's not fair to attribute non-essential properties to someone as if they are essential properties.
"We've got the free will we think we have . . ."
I don't think I have any free will. I hear this kind of talk – "We all act as if we're free..." Speak for yourself, I don't! "Given the illusion of free will, we have no choice but to act as if we are free." What illusion? I have no such illusion. My intuitions point me completely and totally toward free will skepticism. I'm happy to admit that I have freedom, which is probably what folks are referring to. Freedom in this sense refers to having options to choose from and the sense of choice that accompanies selecting one option over others. Sure, absolutely, I have that. But while freedom concerns the choices you have available to you, free will concerns the nature of the choice made—does your choice reveal something about you per se or merely about what you have, about your circumstances?
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