you’re confusing, not different things, but different levels. that is not even wrong, which is why, if not clarified, it can be taken to be right, or at least taken to make sense. in a single phrase, you’re confusing the tool with its use. say we have a knife. that is just an object and not much can be said about it, except maybe a description of its physical properties. now say a chef takes it and uses it to cook something. we can now say a lot of things, not about the knife, but about its use in the cooking process. now imagine that instead of a chef, we now have a thief who gets the same knife and uses it to rob people on the streets. we can also say a lot of things about its use in this case. but if we were to ban knives without exception after we see the thief using it, or were to defend the thief showing what the chef can do with the knife, we’d be mixing unrelated things, even if the same knife is involved in each case. and if such a confusion of levels is allowed to develop, we would reach absurdities such as imprisoning knives and not thieves, or taking all chefs to be thieves or to have a secret tendency towards it, or to think that people who use knives in street fights know good cooking recipes, or who knows what else.
the issue here is that we tend to associate, and even identify, elements we usually experience recurrently together. this gives us a sense of coherence in the world we inhabit, which is needed for effective action in it. yet, this natural tendency can drive us into unimaginable nonsense if we are not aware of it. that is to say, if you are a chef and you spend most of your time in kitchens and restaurants, or if you are a lawyer and spend all your time in prisons and courts defending or accusing criminals, you will end up associating spontaneously certain events with certain persons or objects; but if this practical tendency is overlooked, problems might develop in silence and when they become visible they will be already part of our action system, which will make it impossible to solve them without major changes involving the whole organization.
evidently, from the inside, clarifying this is nearly impossible, you could speculate about it at best, but an easier and more effective way would be to put yourself from time to time in places where your usual surroundings are given different uses, for a direct experience in a specific context, where you can see things being used by people in their lives, is more telling than any discourse. which obviously is not to say that mere experience is enough, for you could keep your usual views and see the chef as a bad thief or the thief as an eccentric chef. the point is, when does the mind pay attention to this difference, and when does it ignore it? what are its criteria here?