Usually when I try to read a philosophical text, I find it very unsatisfying. The philosophers are just not rigorous, effectively invalidating all their own tho

Usually when I try to read a philosophical text, I find it very unsatisfying. The philosophers are just not rigorous, effectively invalidating all their own thoughts. Yeah, I agree with most of your points. I feel this is a little more true of modern philosophers I read-- there is less rigor than is warranted. I don't feel it invalidates the important parts (to me), which are the questions raised by their arguments/discussion. Why does it matter what value one's life has? The lecture doesn't seem to give an answer. This lecture aside, (as I mentioned), I personally feel the value in philosophy is in the questions it raises and areas it explores, not specifically in any answers it provides. I also want those answers, but I don't look to philosophers to provide them. Sometimes they offer conceptual models that do help in scenarios where science isn't giving me a better one, but their "answers" are more like "suggestions" that may later give way to formal theories and empirical experiments once science catches up. They are just WAY too shortsighted. I think philosophers, as a whole, aren't short-sighted. I've always believed that the best philosophers explore different "assumption trees" in their quest for earnest questions. Certain assumptions have to be made in order to discuss much of anything at all in philosophy (e.g. we exist, etc) so some of the short-sightedness symptoms you sense might just be hidden in the assumptions of that particular discussion.