Hi Jan
The reason I brought up the semiotic aspect is because confusion in terminology is irreducible.
When you do a Fourier analysis you are adding your input to a periodic substrate (sine waves at various frequencies), so you can't escape the fundamental periodic nature of the analysis even if you are analysing inharmonic noise. But the *function* of Fourier analysis is to convert that periodic representation into a single "frequency" or note-name value. At that level you are perfectly correct: Saying that something is at 220Hz is fundamentally an aperiodic statement.
And you are right, when you dig into it: You can usefully still treat noisy signals as having a well defined pitch if you are careful about it and find stable patterns of representation (periodicity again), even if it isn't immediately strictly obvious why it would make theoretical sense.
This whole process forms a semiotic cycle where you move from one type of representation to another using either periodic or static referents without a starting or stopping point. So, for example, the ear-drum is impacted by air-pressure variations (periodic) which gets transferred to the cochlea where specific hair-cells are activated (point-like in terms of position), which in turn increases the periodic firing of neurons, which results in the release of excitatory or inhibitory neurotransmitters and so forths. It can always be framed as firsts impacting seconds in terms of thirds which act as firsts. How all that amounts to conscious perception of something like "Pitch" is appropriately described as "The Hard Problem".
To come full circle on this (as it were), this type of semiotic confusion is also where political division comes from. Not only is everyone defining their terms in their own ways, but people also approach things from different levels of analysis with different functions in mind, before you even consider absurd assumptions that we all start with and forget we made. As Mendelsohn said: "It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise"—The real world is far too precise to be adequately described by mere words. The only solution is to talk it through, but that requires an open forum and a presumption of good faith that is decidedly lacking in the current political discourse for various reasons, not the least of which is deliberate active disinformation campaigns from *everybody* involved along with their respective uncles. Even people who might not even be considered as players. When people are locked into a static point of view and refuse to consider their own axioms, though, any debate quickly devolves into little more than proselytisation of devoutly held beliefs along with the exercise of shibboleths and various oaths of allegiance.
Doug