Your definition only partially accords with the definition given in the Oxford dictionary of the English language: "Empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic."
Note that this definition includes, not only "observation" — science's principal method which basically describes its field of operation — but also "experience."
It seems clear to me that "experience" is a category that accommodates such things as, say, "qualia." It is evident that human beings incessantly have experiences of "qualia." [E.g., self-conscious thoughts, feelings, subjective reactions to sensory inputs (e.g., "hot", "cold"; "light," "dark"; "red," "blue," etc.]
And yet science has no traction by way of its method to bring such a class of experience into the "realm" of what it can directly observe and measure.
But just because science can't address qualia methodologically, does that mean that qualia are fictional?
Therefore I would say that your definition of what is "empirical" has been reduced to senselessness, given universal, historical human experience, and just plain common sense.
JMHO FWIW
Thanks, as ever, dear tacticalogic, for writing.
My definition of "empirical" differed from yours only in the exclusion of "experience". Since you've declared that to reduce it to "senselessness", then apparently you consider only "experience" to be sensical, and all the rest to be nonsense.
I'll take your opinion on this matter into consideration based on it's apparent logical consistency and practicality if that's what you wish.
Qualia can only be experienced - never conveyed.