These things are not innate, they are learnt. You are essentially saying you can only learn to cook if you already know how to cook. Obviously this is not true otherwise no one would ever learn to cook.

To develop the intuition for flavour and quantities you have to be willing to ruin your food. Add too much salt and you'll find out pretty quick. You'll also learn pretty quickly that the "right" amount is somewhere between too little and too much.