Abstract

An attempt is made first to present John Dewey's instrumentalist ethics , and then to show the perhaps unique applicability of instrumentalism to the new moral and legal problems arising in space. These problems involve, for example, the issue of Mutual Assured Destruction versus Space Defense Initiative , the impending environmental issues of space pollution and debris, the commercialization of space, the issue of economic justice in space, and so on. It is argued that instrumentalist ethics, requiring that moral and value problems be approached and solved by standard scientific method, the hypothetico-deductive technique, is ideally suited for the international dialogue needed for resolving moral and therefore legal problems in space. There appears to be no international language other than that of science in terms of which the superpowers and other space-interested nations can converse