Originally an alleged direct relation, analogous to visual seeing, between the mind and something abstract and so not accessible to the senses. What are intuited (which can be derivatively called 'intuitions') may be abstract objects, like numbers or properties, or certain truths regarded as not accessible to investigation through the senses or calculation; the mere short-circuiting of such processes in 'bank manager's intuition' would not count as intuition for philosophy.
Kant talks of our intuiting space and time, in a way which is direct and entirely free from any mediation by the intellect - but this must be distinguished from an alleged pure reception of 'raw data' from the senses; the intuiting is presupposed by , and so cannot depend upon, sensory experience.
Intuitions or alleged intuitions have been important in logic, metaphysics, and ethics, as well as in epistemology. Recently, however, the term 'intuition' has been used for pre-philosophical thoughts or feelings, e.g. on morality, which emerge in thought experiments and are then used philosophically.
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