I develop a Carnapian view on the epistemic value of a central philosophical enterprise: making our ordinary messy concepts more orderly. Drawing on recent accounts of non-factive understanding, I propose that orderly concepts contribute to the “non-mirroring” (or subject-fitting, as opposed to object-fitting) aspect of understanding. This account allows us to make sense of the epistemic value of an important part of philosophy from a metaphysically anti-realist perspective and to explain how philosophy can make progress, although philosophers fail to converge on the same answers to philosophical questions.