John Searle is one of those thinkers I disagree with, yet his ideas were fruitful — providing plenty of fuel for discussion. In particular, much of Daniel Dennett’s work begins with rebuttals of Searle’s claims, showing that they are inconsistent or meaningless. As in a story by Stanisław Lem — we all know there are no dragons, but it’s all about the beauty of the proofs.

The same goes for "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel — one of the most cited essays in the philosophy of mind. I had heard numerous references to it and finally expected to read an insightful masterpiece. Yet it turned out to be slightly tautological: that to experience, you need to be. Personally, I think the word be is a philosopher’s snake oil, or a "lockpick word" — it can be used anywhere, but remains fuzzy even in its intended use; vide E-Prime, an attempt to write English without "be": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime.