As a practical matter I just don't think it's useful to lose the distinction between artificial and natural, even if I cannot define precisely when something is

As a practical matter I just don't think it's useful to lose the distinction between artificial and natural, even if I cannot define precisely when something is one or the other. In the same way it's not useful to lose the distinction between "selfish" and "selfless" which is a good enough reason to reject psychological egoism. I think it's okay to accept something is true in an "ultimate sense", but not in a practical sense. e.g. that all technology is a natural process since the causal chain that led to it happened or rather was allowed by physics. To wit, plastics really are natural because humans evolved to be able to make plastics. If you argue against plastics being natural, then you might argue that anything "made" by an individual organism is artificial, which is clearly absurd. No super interested in finding a resolution here, since I don't think the common meanings are problematic.