Epistemic trade-offs in aesthetic judgement

Aesthetic judgment inherently involves a complex tension between subjective emotional immersion and rational analysis. This paper addresses the "epistemic trade-offs" intrinsic to aesthetic practice, in which maximizing one type of epistemic goodsuch as emotional authenticity or immersive experienceoften requires sacrificing anothersuch as conceptual clarity or structural analysis. Adopting a framework of epistemic rule-consequentialism, the study evaluates the rationality of aesthetic judgments based on their overall cognitive outcomes rather than adherence to rigid a priori rules. The paper proposes a normative mechanism, "aggregate epistemic optimization", facilitates the deliberate weighing and prioritization of competing cognitive goals. Through case studies of film narratives (e.g.,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Parasite) and abstract painting, the analysis demonstrates how specific contexts require different cognitive priority structures. The study concludes that acknowledging these trade-offs does not lead to relativism; instead, by establishing context-sensitive rules and minimum epistemic thresholds, it is possible to construct a flexible yet normative framework that balances the diversity of aesthetic experience with the rigor of rational evaluation.