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That someone, in fact, represents a certain possibility of self-understanding, together with the claim, implicit or explicit, that it is our authentic possibility, can be verified readily enough simply by appeal to particular empirical-historical experience such as anyone might possibly have. But that this representation is efficacious, in that it is experienced by an individual as confronting her or him with just such a personal decision about her or his self-understanding is not a matter of empirical --– but of existential-historical experience. The individual has to experience the representation as confronting precisely her or him with this fundamental decision. Moreover, that the claim made or implied by the representation is true, that the possibility it represents is, in reality, one's own authentic possibility, also cannot be validated by appeal to any particular empirical-historical experience or procedures of verification. It can be directly validated, if at all, only by again appealing to one's existential-historical experience that it answers one's underlying existential question about the meaning of one's existence more adequately than any alternative answer. Indirectly, of course, it can also be validated more objectively by following properly metaphysical and moral procedures of verification so as to verify its necessary metaphysical and moral implications respectively, although these procedures, also, go beyond any required to verify strictly empirical-historical assertions.

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