  Ordinarily, each of us has a very unique type of concern for our own past and future selves: it matters to you, in a very special way, what happens to you, what experiences you undergo, how you act, etc., now, in the future, and in the past. Call this special species of concern prudential concern. We normally assume that prudential concern strictly tracks personal identity: one has prudential concern only for oneself and one is always concerned with oneself in this way. By contrast, Jeff McMahan has argued that (at least within the bounds of numerical identity) prudential concern also ought to track the degree of psychological ties: prudential concern of two selves at different stages of life for one another ought to weaken in proportion to the weakness of the psychological connection between them (McMahan 2002, 69-82). In the context of the severe psychological transformations caused by a disease like Alzheimer's, this means that the appropriate level of prudential concern of the earlier and current self for one another would be rather slight. The two selves are not bound by a sufficiently strong common prudential interest, and so the person's earlier interests, no matter how important, do not transfer as particularly important interests of her current psychologically disconnected self. Any potential conflicts between the interests of the two selves are now akin to conflicts between two entities with altogether independent interests.