Here's something from the Internet that touches on nothingness and defining it v. somethingness:

"The problems considered in epistemology are:



Is genuine knowledge attainable at all? Is the skeptic right?
What are the limits of knowledge?
From what faculties of the mind does knowledge originate?
Which method should be used to obtain valid knowledge?
How do you justify a priori statements?
Where is the boundary between the subjective and objective factors?
What is the nature of truth?


SKEPTICISM

This is the view that questions whether valid or reliable knowledge is ever attainable by a human being. Some skeptics stated that nothing can be known. Other skeptics stated that they did not know whether knowledge was possible; they suspended judgment on the issue. Some of the common examples used by skeptics are the illusions and deceptions of our senses. Others point to the complexity of any experience and ask how you can know what is the essence or real nature of the things you are experiencing."

http://www.philosophyclass.com/epistemology.htm

The question of the senses--how we come to reality through our senses when our senses receive limited and often misconstrued information--presents the problem of what you think you perceive may be a different thing altogether from what I perceive. Take different accounts of an automobile accident witnessed by different people, for example. Take any slice of life witnessed by different people...

That gets into the idea of communication and scaffoding of ideas. Through the back and forth interchange of ideas, we may come closer to understanding each other. The most interesting part of scaffolding (and I've forgotten the philosopher's name who introduced the concept, but may be able to find it today unless someone else knows it) is that of the comprehension of the book an author has written for his/her conceived audience plus the audience of self. But in later times, the book read will be received in a different way because the understanding itself--with its culture, different history, different experiences--will be limited in some ways by not being of the time the work was written, but expanded in others because of new concepts, understandings, and information not known to the author. There were numerous "The Author in His Time" courses offered when I was in graduate school as an attempt to put students into the period of writing so we could make some sort of attempt to understand better the context of the writing.

And another part of scaffolding was the interchange of information and ideas among people discussing and writing about the work. What you bring to my understanding affects my understanding, as mine could yours. But the idea of the work we separately hold in our heads is finally different from each other's, no matter how much we talk or write to each other. Still, there is something to be gained usually from these interchanges.

And, yeah, nothing can come out of such exchanges, if I believe you're dead wrong or vice versa. Well, maybe not. You may gain the idea that I'm dead wrong, and that in itself is another idea and something beyond nothing.

I've had the interesting experience of sharing my poetry with people who have seen things in the poem I never intended to be there, but I've been delighted to read the poems through their eyes. And I've gained something valuable in hearing what they saw--and even have wondered was "it" was there all the time--coming from a repressed or suppressed area in my brain. This experience is scaffolding at its best.

Comment on aught: I never knew that meant nothing. Something new here.

Best regards,
WW