Can views on personal identity be neutral for practical concerns?

Some authors, including E. Olson and D. Shoemaker, argue that our numerical identity over time is irrelevant to practical issues such as moral responsibility or self-concern. In this way, they protect positions on personal identity against the charge of potentially controversial implications. I claim that their strategy is implausible. Since the debate is about conditions of our identity, it is about the identity conditions of those individuals to whom we refer first-personally. However, first-personal reference plays special roles in our practical thinking; in particular, our intentions to do something presuppose that we will be the doers of the intended acts. Therefore, the subject of the intention also has a good reason to be concerned about the future performer of the intended action. The problem of personal identity, in general, is a question of the identity of subjects of intentional (then also rational and moral) action. As a result, this is why adequate answers to it cannot explain our persistence in terms of a practically irrelevant relation.