I was understanding you all along until this line:
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>I wanted to say that "a or b and c" is in fact "a or (b and c)". That doesn't mean the operation between parentheses is evaluated first.
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Doesn't precedence of operators as well as the parentheses that you supplied mean exactly that the operation in the parentheses IS evaluated first. So in your example with the parentheses isn't (b or c) evaluated then the result is ORed with a? Without resorting to semantics something with higher precedence PRECEDES, that is happens first in time.