It has been shown conclusively that the human mind is only capable of processing a limited number of variables, this number roughly corresponding to the amount of data held in working (short term) memory; for most people between 5 and 8 items (Miller: 1956). This means that when making decisions or judgements which involve many and complex variables the conscious mind is not well equipped for the task and the job is best handed over to non-conscious processes (Dijksterhuis: 2004).

This paper will consider the mechanism by which the unconscious mind arrives at these decisions. We will introduce a model in which problems involving multiple variables are ‘intuited’ by the aggregation of sets of variables into conceptual unities, these unities being based on simple embodied metaphors. The various entailments of these metaphors, operating at an unconscious level provide holistic shortcuts to knowledge not directly drawn from the consciously available data. For example, it will be claimed that the intuition shown by stock market traders in juggling multiple, highly variable data sets when making rapid decisions, is enabled through their non-conscious metaphorical conceptualisation of the trading process. Successful traders use this unconscious understanding to inform their decision making, even though they have no conscious awareness of the deeply metaphorical, even poetic nature of the cognition they are employing.