My own intuition (as a computer scientist more than as a hiker) is that we’d be better off treating the types of routes and the types of (non-)paths as orthogonal issues. Both topics are complex and ill defined but maybe there is some complexity that can be avoided by keeping something like a “physical surface vs information space” distinction. There is so much to sort out between node networks and other routing systems that I fear that adding non-paths may confuse the issue beyond recognition.
I remember that a few months ago I tried to steer the debate about scrambles towards the more general issues of non-paths: beaches, rocky places, some meadows, etc. There is a similar debate among cross-country skiers too: map a fake path or a surface? Could it be that there is something to gain from considering “generalized paths” as a combination of nodes, ways and areas?