The absence of something cannot be conceived. Conception always extends to a reference, be it external or internal. Thus, nothing, strictly speaking, can be conceived.

Absence can be conceived, but only as negatively symbolic. That is, absence can be conceived only as representative of componential incompletion. Subtracting one from one leaves zero, but zero is not a concept that refers to an existent quantity. It refers to the absence of potentially existent quantity. Zero is absolute abstraction of absence.

Therefore, when it is said that nothing can derive from nothing, while it is trivially true that one can conceive an infinity of nothings, the nontrivial point to be understood is that nothing is the absence of something, which implies that part or all of something must be presumed to be what nothing is not. Nothing is no thing. Thus, a thing is positively conceived in contrast to a negative, namely, some thing that does not exist.

It follows, then, that nothing cannot derive from nothing without a potentially infinite regress of more nothings, each of which derives from something. Linguistically, this means that one cannot, again, strictly speaking, communicate any part of this derivation other than the part that exists, the potential or actual something under question.

Language is a symbolic mediation mechanism or, essentially, translator between mental and physical reality states. More specifically, it can be seen as a set-theoretically isomorphic mapping onto reality. Thus, language maps onto that which either exists or is known to potentially exist. It does not in a strictly logical sense map onto the absence of anything.

Thus, saying that nothing can derive from nothing is truly saying nothing. It would be much clearer to say that something cannot derive from nothing. This clearly indicates some thing to which part or all of its absence conceptually applies, even if that conception is imaginary and not at all probable given the flights of fancy that imagination likes to take as often as possible, leading us further and further away from the truth under the culturally accepted but not very scientific exclusionary rule of intuition.