Instinctual Behavior Vs Intelligent Decisions

The urge to figure stuff out is itself instinctual. The act of making decisions using parts of the brain associated with intelligence comes naturally to us, it is instinctual. Nobody has to learn to use intelligence - they just have to learn the relevant information and the skills to analyse that information well.

Yes, we inherit our intelligence. Much of this is caused by the genome we inherit - along with the environment of our development. This genome has mutated since it first came into being. The current theory would predict that the first life was not intelligent. So intelligence has arisen through the mechanisms described by the present theory of evolution. There may be further mechanisms that are as yet unknown.

But sure, learning is an important part of human brain development, but I'm talking about the unlearned stuff specifically.

I'm not sure. In fact I'm persuaded that it does in fact happen. I can't remember the name of the effect, but the idea that organisms that learn ideas quickly have greater success - the faster the better- and this continues until it is no longer even required for the behaviour to be learned at all.

What you have described is by no means 'forbidden' by Darwinism, it is essentially an example of what Waddington called canalisation, the repeated behaviour forms the suitable environment to select for variations which promote that behaviour. Waddington further called the situation where an organism chooses its own environment to a degree or modifies that environment to its own ends 'The Exploitive System'.
Waddington identified 4 systems involved in evolution, the exploitive system, the epigenetic system, the natural selective system and the genetic system.

Some instincts may have originally been learned behaviour, but certainly not all instincts. And even those that are originally learned and later became instinctual did so as a result of mutations.

Wow, whenever a creationist/IDist brings up epigentics nowadays it is like a homeopathy proponent bringing up quantum mechanics, its just a word they use, they clearly have no idea what it means and they assume no one else does either but feel it adds a lovely patina of sciencyness to their nonsense.Please provide a link to some research showing epigenetics mediating the inheritance of learned behaviour. If you can't then please stop pretending it exists.

Sure it can, by social transmission and potentially in the longer term by the sort of canalisation/genetic assimilation I described.

Whether this should really be considered a case of a learned behaviour, non-averse behaviour in the averse population, becoming an instictual one is debatable since there was clearly already some non-averse behaviour present in the variability of the original wild-type population.

The authors explain this as a results of canalisation interacting with the strong selection for aversion applied to the population. This is perhaps a necessary conclusion since in the case of the unselected lines being raised on the peppermint food there seems to be no effect on their aversion!Whether this should really be considered a case of a learned behaviour, non-averse behaviour in the averse population, becoming an instictual one is debatable since there was clearly already some non-averse behaviour present in the variability of the original wild-type population.

Through the genes.

Thinking neural system is a functional extension of genome, intervening in evolution process in a decisive way. .....In multi-cellular level, due to increased complexity and the greater distances, information has to travel from environment to genome. Here I think we are ultimately obliged to put in the picture the neural system (together with the adrenal one), as it’s known properties, as a transfer mechanism, makes it the best choice among other tissues. On the other hand the somatic/germline division in metazoa calls for a mechanism that connects these two.
Neural system’s new role.......Information staff, after it had entered inside neural system is not just being transferred by it; information is being coded, valuated, emotionally colored and memorized e.c.t. There is choosing between information that is useful to survival and that it is not, understanding of possible dangers, threats, learning from mistakes or successes. Inside neural tissue tendencies are created, special actions of response are chosen, solutions to problems are found, plans are made etc. Also neural system decides what to transfer from the load of incoming information to genome of each organism, or, through empathy, to other members of the species and so to wide population genome. ......

But I would say that I think studies in mice and other similar animals have shown that instinctive traits such as 'aggression' have a genetic component, but I don't know the details. I guess you could look them up with a bit of searching around if you are genuinely interested.