"We've always been at war with Eastasia."

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success..”

I think -- I suspect -- at least, I hope -- that if we narrowly scope the definition of "empirical truth" to narrow standards of involving observation, testing, and resting as much as possible on mathematics and hard science, and only making highly parameterized statements when dealing with more subjective issues -- in this case, I think we'll be allowed to have "empirical truth" stand as it is.

In regards to ‘empirically true’, don’t people already refer to this as ‘scientifically true’. People also refer to facts, opinions and beliefs and these seem similar to your empirical/affective/spiritual truth.

But consider instead, "Shakespeare is truth" or "I've been living a lie." What are these?

Language is not logic. Words are just wind and people can say whatever they want. I assume this holds for other languages as well, but English involves metaphors, understatement, overstatement, hyperbole etc.  When people say things, they are not always meant to be assertions. The words might just be for rhetorical effect and meant as an attempt to draw attention to something. For example, I would guess that saying “Shakespeare is truth” is meant to allude to the meaningfulness of Shakespeare writings. Another example might be that you say you are starving when you are actually just hungry. This is a hyperbole or Auxesis it is not meant to be taken literally, but is meant to draw attention to the fact that you are hungry.

That's not to say there won't be heated disagreements by experts in a field about what the empirical is -- such is normal and productive -- but ideally we can stop much of the wasted energy that comes from when a rationalist is making an argument about empirical truth, the other party is making an argument about affective truth, and both sides are getting frustrated.

I find it easier to use something like this baloney detection kit. It’s normally pretty easy to tell when people are arguing about beliefs rather than facts.