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My understanding is that intuition is the sum of mental processes that occur without our full awareness. Our conscious logic uses working memory which is quite limited in its capacity to handle lots of data. I recall hearing on "all in the mind" on radio national that some research shows that we make accurate decisions consciously for situations in which not much data is required, but that in more complex settings, we do well if we do some research and then follow gut feelings (usually given a bit of time to process) which are the output of our unconscious processing. I think this is different from instinct and training. Our intuition can also act quickly, but uses a great amount of sensory input that we are not aware of eg body language etc.
I was at a training session with an American professor of psychiatry, Dan Siegel who does a lot of work on the neurobiology of mind and he was saying that there are nerve fibres directly connecting the viscera with the frontal cortex, where intuition (by the above definition) resides - hence the truth of the notion of a gut feeling.
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