I don't understand what you're saying, Phil. You haven't said anything about WHAT. You seem to me to be saying that someone is focused on a certain where, who, and when, and that you want to center the why and how.

I am asking for the WHAT.

WHAT is apple? Someone or other is saying that teachers are WHO eat apples, and WHY they're eating is to keep the doctor away, and WHEN they were eating most was 1962, and WHERE they eat the most is VERMONT, etc... But WHAT is apple??? A fruit? Yes, but what fruit? WHAT IS APPLE?

An apple is not an orange. True, what an apple is is distinguished from what in orange is in that, unlike an orange, an apple is associated with teacher's pets and keeping away doctors and Vermont and 1962... But there is something more immediate about what an apple is that, in my opinion, makes no sense to ignore. if I'm talking about apples and another person starts talking about oranges, it's a puzzling gesture. It makes me wonder if he knows WHAT an apple actually is.

Now, if he has some theory that oranges are really a variety of apple (contrary to popular belief), oranges are proto-apples, or some cultural or historical view remote from our own fails to distinguish them, or some thing like that, I'd expect he'd put that out there. Otherwise, if he just goes on rambling about oranges as if they were apples, I have to suspect he doesn't know what apples are.