For me, a quality (or its negative counterpart, a defect) is not, contrary to what it might seem, inherently associated with any consideration of value.
Let us take a few examples: beautiful, fair, weak, cowardly, astonishing are qualities (positive or negative). I maintain that when we attribute qualities to a thing, we are not making a value judgement but a factual judgement. For instance, the judgements 'Socrates is just' or 'That soldier is cowardly' are of the same kind (and share the same type of objectivity) as 'That vase is made of clay'.
In fact, I can see empirically that such and such a soldier is a coward by seeing him run off at the start of the bombardment; I can call on experience in the same way as I can when I want to check the material of the vase. Similarly, the fact that Socrates is just and more moral than a tyrant is an observable fact. It is obvious and cannot be called into question. We can see this, just as we can see the nature of the material in the vase.
On the other hand, what is not a fact and is not self-evident is the value of this quality, such as 'justice' or 'cowardice'. This introduces the problematic point: the problem of values.
In conclusion, it is clear from the above that 'Socrates is just' is a factual judgement, whereas 'Justice has value' is a value judgement.
The meaning of the term 'quality' may now be clear to us: qualities are first and foremost empirical properties like any other.
'Coward' or 'good' are just as much empirical properties as the 'degree of fusion' or 'solidity' of a material. But qualities, while remaining empirical properties, do not appear to us as such, because we attribute to them something that we do not attribute to properties of the 'classic' type (for example physical, such as heavy, hard, light, etc.): a value. Since value is not something empirical or observable, we believe that qualities have nothing empirical or observable about them. Now, since the value we attribute to certain properties is, in my view, based on nothing other than usage, custom, and mores, we have dogmatically separated qualities like justice and beauty from other properties.
In other words, qualities are properties to which humans have perhaps mistakenly attributed a value. Had they not considered these properties valuable, they would remain what they are in fact—empirical properties, as indifferent as the solidity of a material and as ascertainable in their existence as the latter.
It would seem, then, that in assigning value to certain properties, we have undermined the certainty of their existence. However, this investigation suggests that the certainty of the existence of these qualities is just as assured as that of other properties (i.e., that we can determine whether a given act is good or not), while it is their value that remains uncertain.
As a result, we are proposing a reconsideration of the traditional distinction between judgements of fact and judgements of value, since we are making a considerable extension of the domain of facts, by affirming that the whole field of qualities is part of this domain. The effort made by sociology or history to exclude all consideration of quality by refusing value judgements, in order to remain in the realm of facts (considered more objective), is therefore unnecessary.