Are they equivocating on "faith" here or do they just mean "trust" and not "religious faith"?

> There's no directly experiencing the world.

You say that as if there is some possible world where we experience it "directly" and our current world falls short somehow.

That's a pretty odd view - how much more "directly" could we experience the world?

You might want to look into reliabilism and/or the work of GE Moore.

Descartes is not the endpoint of epistemology.

> There’s no good argument against external world skepticism.

There's also no good reason to accept it

Perhaps so, but the point still stands

No, that's not correct.

The ordinary concept also includes the idea that one's choices are a product of one's taste, values and experience - therefore tied to the causal history of one's life.

No, it's not - the ordinary concept is vague and contradictory

That ignores the purpose of possible-world thinking

That "could have done otherwise" means there's a possible world in which a different choice was made, not that determinism is false.

And they also believe that their free choices should be governed by their values and preferences which are a product of their upbringing

> ordinary people generally understand free will as the ability to choose a desired course of action without restraint

And that is perfectly compatible with determinism

> free will as commonly understood

Are you certain that the way free will is commonly understood is coherent?

I don't think it is

Dennett has a newer, more generally accessible book on compatibilism called Freedom Evolves - highly recommended!