Ignoring, for the moment, the deeper metaphorical question of how many of us are any given brain failure, does anyone know whether anosognosics actually think that they're using their paralyzed arm? Because I have a very strong sense of using my arms, and I suspect from the earlier description that anosognosics deny their arm being paralyzed, but wouldn't claim that they are actually typing with two hands, for example. Anybody know more on that?
Clearly, they don't think they use their arm - until someone points out to them that only people with paralyzed arms don't use them, at which point they fabricate the relevant memories.
D:
Followup to: The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
Brain damage patients with anosognosia are incapable of considering, noticing, admitting, or realizing even after being argued with, that their left arm, left leg, or left side of the body, is paralyzed. Again I'll quote Yvain's summary:
A brief search didn't turn up a base-rate frequency in the population for left-arm paralysis with anosognosia, but let's say the base rate is 1 in 10,000,000 individuals (so around 670 individuals worldwide).
Supposing this to be the prior, what is your estimated probability that your left arm is currently paralyzed?
Added: This interests me because it seems to be a special case of the same general issue discussed in The Modesty Argument and Robin's reply Sleepy Fools - when pathological minds roughly similar to yours update based on fabricated evidence to conclude they are not pathological, under what circumstances can you update on different-seeming evidence to conclude that you are not pathological?