system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How can I show my dad, an old school neopositivist, that philosophy is valuable?

My dad studied philosophy of science and neopositivism (especially Karnap) in the sixties, and he believes that most branches of philosophy are garbage (he says political philosophy is akin to astrology, Phil of mind is "what learned man do while sitting in a couch", chomsky is a snake oil salesmen and so on). At the same time he does amateur philosophy, writing about the ethics of capitalism(wat). In short he has got a massive bias against academic philosophy and it's getting grating whenever I start talking about interesting ideas in philosophy to hear them snarkly dismissed. I've tried convincing him but he's close minded about the issue and having way more expertise than me I suppose he feels confident in his opinion. Is there anything I could show him (a defense of philosophy or maybe a "clearly valuable" essay by a professional philosopher?) to make him open up?
gpt
I find the prospect of someone being a neopositivist and not thinking much of academic philosophy somewhat jarring--neopositivism being one of the most influential traditions in recent academic philosophy.  It sounds like he advocates a number of respectable philosophical positions, for instance you mention non-cognitivism about ethics in one of the comments here.

Is the issue that you disagree with his holding these positions, or that you hold different positions than these and which he disagrees with?  If it's something like this, you could try to address such a disagreement by each of you working on understanding the other's position; for instance, you would read some works on non-cognitivism, and he could read some works on cognitivism (if you're a cognitivist, and that's the point of disagreement).

If it's not a matter of disagreement and your father is just looking for some philosophy to read, and that he will find agreeable, since he already likes neopositivism it would be natural to suggest some readings from logical empiricism.  Schlick, Carnap, Neurath, and Reichenbach are all excellent and often relatively accessible.