《我这样的机器》中亚当夏娃的存在困境与选择

Existential Dilemma and Choices of Adams and Eves in Machines Like Me

摘要: 伊恩·麦克尤恩在《我这样的机器》中揭示了人工智能的存在困境，机器人多因能够感知自我意识而与人类世界对其工具化属性的期待相抵，陷入根本性悖论。相较于既有研究聚焦人机冲突和机器伦理、人机共存与共同体，本文关注小说中尚未被学界探讨的关于机器人生存选择的哲学命题，从存在主义视角分析获得自我意识的机器人如何重构存在主义范式。智能机器人亚当与夏娃们多选择以自废主体意识反抗被预设本质，走向“自在存在”；查理的机器人亚当则通过学习、创作与情感联结延续和发展意识主体性，保持“自为存在”。两种抉择构成机器人对人类存在主义命题的双向演绎，前者以消亡解构被赋予的本质，后者以超越性的创造重构存在的意义。麦克尤恩借此讨论人机界限的消融，存在主义的核心关切也从人类独享转为跨物种对话。

Abstract: Ian McEwan reveals the existential dilemma of artificial intelligence in his novel Machines Like Me, in which robots, endowed with consciousness, often contradict human world’s expectation of their instrumental essence, thus falling into a fundamental existential paradox. In contrast to existing studies that focus on human-machine conflicts, coexistence and community, as well as machine ethics, this paper addresses the philosophical proposition of robots’ existential choices that has not yet been explored in academia. From an existentialist perspective, this paper analyzes how self-aware robots reconstruct the paradigm of existentialism. Intelligent robots—Adams and Eves—mostly tend to resist their preassigned essence by abandoning their consciousness, thereby moving toward being-in-itself; among them, by contrast, Charlie’s Adam sustains and develops his conscious subjectivity through learning, creation, and emotional attachment, thus remaining in a state of being-for-itself. Machines’ choices form two deductions of the human existential proposition: one deconstructs pre-given essence through extinction, the other reconstructs existential meaning via creation of transcendence. McEwan thus explores the potential blurring of human-machine boundaries. Existentialism’s core concern has likewise shifted from an exclusively human focus to cross-species communication.