Intuition vs Instinct

Hello,

Well basically the characteristics of instinct are unlearnt inherited fixed action patterns or responses to certain or specific stimuli. For example when it gets dark bats (well most of them) wake up and go to 'work' but (normally) on the other hand human beings go to bed - unless they are doing shift work. Instinctively we know that shift work is going to be hard work as it operates against our long held behaviours.

Instincts do not need learning. For example birds 'know' how to build nests and spiders know how to build a web. There is a lot of scientific research around on instinct.

On the other hand intuition is a vague concept where a person seems to know something or sensing something without reasoning about it - in a way related to insight or knowing without learning. There is a philisophical field of inquiry called Intuition created by Henri Bergson (google him).

Check this website for more information - might provide some food for thought: Intuition

Here is a quote from that site:
Intuition, for me, is the rat that gnaws through the maze. It’s the annoying squeak you can’t find. It’s the sudden glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye. It is the irrational happily at work wrecking plans, sticking wrenches into carefully constructed ideas and the one intangible happy accident that makes being human glorious fun.

So intuition is not a response to a specific stimuli or behaviour it is something less well defined and enters into the territory of psychics and other 'alternative' (unprovable?) areas...

Both instinct and intuition are mental function.

Instinct is the aspect of behavior that is innate. It is complex and normally adaptive. A powerful impulse. An innate aptitude. It is natural and no effort is necessary. You must have heard human instinct. Animal instinct.

Intuition is an intellectual activity or output. It can be stimulated, intensified and enriched during concentration or meditation.

Inference is also another mental function which is used by adepts

I believe, for the most part, they are the same basic thing... except the direction it plays in.

Instincts, to me, is when the inner comes out.  While intuition is when the outer is manifest internal.

Instincts are genetic, or habitual, or learned... but they are impulses that come from within, deep down, and influence our choices and our actions and make us react in ways we do not necessarily understand.

Intuition is when information, external to the individual, influences that individual in ways they do not understand.  Intuition is when you sense a truth, feel a truth, observe something out of the corner of your eye, subconsciously... and it gnaws at it, it pushes itself up, and though you dont know why you still feel the compulsion to act in ways contrary to conscious reason.  Because, on some level, you possess more knowledge than you are consciously aware of... and on some level, a better choice is known.   On some level, because you have yet to consciously realize, recognize, and process the information.

There is nothing particularly magical or mystical about either instinct or intuition.  Except that intuition doesnt rule out any potential mystical sources.  If you acquire knowledge, intuitively, and from transcendental sources... then for all intent and purpose that is a psychic phenomenon.