  Now one important problem for this view is that it is very difficult  to see why my patterns of concern should track this particular ego,  and not instead the psychological features constituting Relation R.  What is it about this substance that warrants my special  prudential concern, for example? If it is in virtue of its function as the  carrier of the various psychological connections, then we  might well wonder why we shouldn't just care directly for those  connections, rather than merely for the “house” they  live in. But if we make that move, then we have already switched to  reductionism, it seems, and because those direct psychological  connections may hold one-many, identity cannot be what matters.