Nobody has ever suggested filtering out empty elements or dealing
specially with spaces or anything else like that. If you're talking
about that then you've missed the original question.
  

"Does anyone want to argue for keeping it the same?  Or perhaps
argue that a zero-element array is a more sensible result than
a one-element array with one empty string?  (It doesn't seem
like it to me, but maybe somebody thinks so.)"


That means to me dropping empty strings or removing values that don't make sense.  Then the argument begins what values make since to drop.  Just zero length strings or include strings with million white spaces???

One last try.

If there's a column called "shopping list" which is a comma-separated
list of items to buy in the store and I store '' in it. How many items
do you think that means you should go shopping for? Do you think
that's one item that should be rejected because it's an empty string?
Or do you think that's an empty list with zero items listed?
  

What would it look like if it was a zero-length list? You can ask what
would it look like if it was a shopping list of one item called ''.
But I agree both are theoretically consistent, but one is actually
useful in 99% of use cases. The other is only useful in unusual cases.