This is a bit like saying the universe is made of tiny pink elephants, and arguing that this is only untrue in some “naive sense” because we redefined “tiny pink elephant” to mean “excitation of a field”. It doesn’t seem more naive to me to admit that the world is not in fact made of tiny pink elephants than it is to argue “yes it still is made of tiny pink elephants [but only because we redefined the term to match the evidence]”.