Define the words however you'd like. What I was saying is that in my example (E major arpeggios, scherzo 2) it is important to get the arpeggios seamless before washing it with pedal. As in, the jumps from each broken chord to the next shouldn't be noticed. So it's not really a matter of perfecting the finger legato, just getting the transitions seamless. (which is best to perfect with no pedal)
If one is using the pedal on the arpeggios then the only important thing is how they sound with the pedal.
Trying to learn perfect finger legato for those passages is not particularly useful. I don't know why you're telling me this, since I basically said it in the paragraph you replied to.
"So it's not really a matter of perfecting the finger legato[...]"
You said the jumps shouldn't sound broken, but that's only true in regards to the sound with the pedal. The trouble with your posts is that you seem to contradict yourself.
You said it's easier to get the passage to sound even(whether rhythmically or tonally)by practicing without the pedal, but you give no reason for this.
Oh yeah, contradictions left and right. My bad!
I didn't say it was "easier" to practice without pedal. If anything it's more difficult. I said that it's better to perfect seamless arpeggio transitions with no pedal before washing over it with pedal. Seamless arpeggios usually deals with not accenting any notes. It has nothing to do with perfect legato. GeorgeB summed it up better than I did.
I think where I'm confusing you is that you probably think it's useless to practice without pedal if the intent isn't perfecting legato, which is understandable. But my reason for doing so is that I find it much easier to detect and correct bad arpeggiation when I'm not using pedal.