a type of philosophical rhetoric I find completely pointless

When people do things like this:

“it is not a ‘what,’ as some people hold, but purely a that”

or

“people have wasted so much time asking why this happens, when the point is how it happens”

Such words as what, that, why, and how are so mutable in their possible meanings, so context-dependent and variable in their functions, that it is sheer affectation to pretend that one’s opponents are making elementary blunders in using them.

I’m not saying that only bad thinkers do this, either. Heidegger does it quite a bit, and so does William James. I find it pointless nonetheless.