I want to point out that there are lots of situations where English speakers fluently use words that don’t have clear dividing lines between their applicability and their inapplicability—it depends on context and details. “The music is loud.” What if I’m deaf or far away or like to be able to feel the bass line in my bones? That doesn’t make the sentence impermissible or even hard to understand and I don’t need the speaker to produce a decibel value. “If you go to high altitudes, the air is thinner and you might get dizzy.” How high? If I’m dizzy in Denver and the speaker thinks you shouldn’t need to adjust your behavior until there are Sherpas about and meanwhile Batman can breathe in space, that doesn’t make the sentence false, let alone useless. “It’s cold, bring a jacket.” Oh you sweet summer child, I’m good in short sleeves, thanks, I just don’t know what you meant by “cold” -
There are lots of conversational purposes for which you don’t in fact have to know where someone draws the line. You don’t even need to be able to agree on every point’s ordering in the spectrum (“it’s colder today” “that’s just windchill”). The words gesture in a direction. I think “chemicals” does too, and you know what direction because you came up with “unprocessed” as a gloss on “low in chemicals”. If someone doesn’t buy that brand of dip because it’s full of chemicals, in your innocent confusion I suggest you glance at the ingredients list for a guess at the threshold in question.
I suspect pointing out someone’s confusion about the scope of the terms ‘natural’ and ‘chemicals’ is a proxy (not necessarily a bad one) for pointing out that their whole thinking on the topic is confused. It’s a sign they assume incorrectly that natural (whatever they mean by it) is good and chemical (likewise) is bad, which is usually what they are implying.
E.g. I heard someone on the radio talking about this re the term ‘processed’ food; he said people who disapprove of processed food might say it’s much better to eat e.g. pasta with some parmesan and wine. Whereas in fact those are all highly processed foods too. So pointing this out is a more polite way of saying “your thinking is so muddled you haven’t even thought through what counts as ‘processed’ (or ‘natural’ or ‘chemical’), so you’re not justified in assuming that that entails something is good or bad, which indeed it doesn’t.” Which seems a valid point.
I want to point out that there are lots of situations where English speakers fluently use words that don’t have clear dividing lines between their applicability and their inapplicability—it depends on context and details. “The music is loud.” What if I’m deaf or far away or like to be able to feel the bass line in my bones? That doesn’t make the sentence impermissible or even hard to understand and I don’t need the speaker to produce a decibel value. “If you go to high altitudes, the air is thinner and you might get dizzy.” How high? If I’m dizzy in Denver and the speaker thinks you shouldn’t need to adjust your behavior until there are Sherpas about and meanwhile Batman can breathe in space, that doesn’t make the sentence false, let alone useless. “It’s cold, bring a jacket.” Oh you sweet summer child, I’m good in short sleeves, thanks, I just don’t know what you meant by “cold” -
There are lots of conversational purposes for which you don’t in fact have to know where someone draws the line. You don’t even need to be able to agree on every point’s ordering in the spectrum (“it’s colder today” “that’s just windchill”). The words gesture in a direction. I think “chemicals” does too, and you know what direction because you came up with “unprocessed” as a gloss on “low in chemicals”. If someone doesn’t buy that brand of dip because it’s full of chemicals, in your innocent confusion I suggest you glance at the ingredients list for a guess at the threshold in question.
I suspect pointing out someone’s confusion about the scope of the terms ‘natural’ and ‘chemicals’ is a proxy (not necessarily a bad one) for pointing out that their whole thinking on the topic is confused. It’s a sign they assume incorrectly that natural (whatever they mean by it) is good and chemical (likewise) is bad, which is usually what they are implying.
E.g. I heard someone on the radio talking about this re the term ‘processed’ food; he said people who disapprove of processed food might say it’s much better to eat e.g. pasta with some parmesan and wine. Whereas in fact those are all highly processed foods too. So pointing this out is a more polite way of saying “your thinking is so muddled you haven’t even thought through what counts as ‘processed’ (or ‘natural’ or ‘chemical’), so you’re not justified in assuming that that entails something is good or bad, which indeed it doesn’t.” Which seems a valid point.