In a wide sense, an empirical belief is one capable of being confirmed or disconfirmed by sense experience. More narrowly, the term may be restricted so that the confirmation must avoid the use of intermediate theory, since otherwise the belief becomes theoretical in contrast with empirical. In this sense an empirical quality of things is one that can be represented in sense experience, as opposed to an inferred or postulated theoretical property. A purely empirical theory trades only in empirical qualities. See empiricism.