I'm just jettisoning the entire justification and calling a preference a spade.

Good point. There is a lot of fuzziness around "preferences", "ethics", "aesthetics", "virtues" etc. Ultimately all of these seem to involve some axiological notion of "good", or "the good life", or "good character" or even "goods and services".

For instance, what should we make of the so-called "grim aesthetic"? Is grimness a virtue? Should it count as an ethic? If not, why not?